The AL Cy Young Race Is Wide Open

Believe it or not, over a month of the 2026 MLB season is already complete.

While storylines have been hot and heavy already, we are starting to finally come to terms with whether some of the early-season performances are flukes or if there is actually some validity to them.

With the recent news of Tarik Skubal undergoing a procedure in his elbow to release loose bodies, the American League Cy Young Award race is now wide open.

However, I don’t want to only reference the favorites to win the award. That wouldn’t be fun. I want to highlight a couple of the longer shot arms who, I believe, have a chance to shorten the odds as we continue to progress throughout the season.

Entering May 11, here are how the odds currently stand on BetMGM:

I, for one, do not believe some of the guys at the top of the list really need justification. The one-two punch of Cam Schlittler and Max Fried, in New York, has been just what the Yankees needed when they were heading into the season knowing that Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon, and Clarke Schmidt were going to need some time before making their season debut.

Dylan Cease is in the first season of the seven-year, $210 million mega-deal he signed with the Blue Jays this winter and has easily surpassed expectations with how he has pitched so far this season. Then, there’s the biggest surprise of the bunch in Jose Soriano of the Los Angeles Angels.

Despite the fact that looked a bit more mortal in two of his last three starts, the 0.24 ERA in his first six outings easily justifies the current odds of him coming away with some hardware.

In all honesty, the fun part of the season for us cynical baseball fans is that we really would prefer to see the underdogs thrive, and that is why I wanted to put this article together.

Stats provided are before play on May 11.

Jacob deGrom (Rangers): +700

Tell me it does not feel good to see Jacob deGrom back on a list like this again. I know he’s found himself on the podium, but him winning another Cy Young would be massive after everything he’s been through to get here.

Prior to the 2025 season, his first season returning from Tommy John surgery, deGrom had not sniffed the 100-innings-pitched marker. In fact, the 92 innings he pitched in 2021 were 24 innings more than his second-highest mark, which doesn’t truly count because that was in the COVID-shortened 2020 season.

Aside from that, the second-highest total was in 2022 when he pitched in only 64.1 innings.  

After seemingly defying the odds of a 37-year-old pitcher returning to a high-level following such a significant surgery, the vet seems to have reverted back to the ace-caliber starter that proclaimed him the best pitcher in baseball for all those seasons with the Mets.  

As of May 11, deGrom currently has a 2.62 ERA, a 2.83 xFIP, and a 140 ERA+. But what’s most important is that he has brought his strikeout numbers back up to a mark that fans were accustomed to seeing out of deGrom a few years back.

When it comes down to deGrom’s chances of being a true candidate to win the award, one thing that needs to be taken into consideration is that, as cynical baseball fans, we are all suckers for a good comeback story.

If deGrom can stay healthy throughout this season and continue to wipe hitters out without walking anybody (his K-BB% of 28.2% is currently the second-best in MLB among qualified starters), his current odds are only going to shorten as we near the time when votes are placed.

Gavin Williams (Guardians): +3000

Leave it to Cleveland to have two names on this list.

Gavin Williams has had a prospect pedigree ever since he was taken by the Guardians in the first round of the 2021 draft. What wasn’t a given was his turning out to be a major-league starter, considering he wasn’t even a starter in his final season at East Carolina.

That is all a moot point now that he is one of the better pitchers in the American League this season. The ERA (3.74) is the highest of this bunch, but what would a dark horse be if the stats proved him to be the obvious choice?

This hard-throwing right-hander has always had a knack for the highlight-reel stuff on the mound. The start to his MLB career wasn’t what many were expecting, but he has settled in nicely for the Guardians.

As it stands, Williams is limiting his opponents to a 71.2% contact rate, which is below the major-league average, all while striking hitters out at a 29.3% clip.  That puts him in the top 10% of Major League Baseball.

He’s also tied for the lead in the American League in strikeouts with 60. When a player has that type of strikeout ability, they’re always going to be in the mix for hardware. Run prevention is key, though, and he will need to get that number lower as the season progresses, but the talent is here for him to shoot up the leaderboard.

The hard-hit percentage may be a little higher than what you expect for an ace-caliber arm to have, but when he can limit hitters to a .213 batting average while doing so, you wouldn’t have to squint to find a reason why Gavin Williams is a true dark horse contender for the American League Cy Young award.

Parker Messick (Guardians): +3000

The +3000 line for Guardians left-hander Parker Messick sure is juicy. At the ninth-best odds to win the award right now in the American League, it’s hard not to think about considering him. 

Of course, leave it to the Guardians to have candidate(s) on this list. They sure do leave little to no doubt that they truly are one of the pitching factories in baseball.

In 47 innings so far in 2026, Messick is pitching to a 2.30 ERA and a 2.97 xFIP with a groundball rate that does nothing but upset grounds crews everywhere at 46.6%. Not to mention that he has already accumulated 1.4 fWAR in just eight starts this season.

The reason he has been able to be as successful as he has to this point is due to the fact that he is able to locate his pitches to almost perfection when he needs to.

However, it isn’t just that.

It’s the fact that his changeup is as diabolical as ever. This singular pitch immensely aids his ability to put hitters away at ease. Coming up as a prospect in Cleveland’s system, it wasn’t that he was necessarily overlooked, but not having the upper-90s velocity or any pitch that can blow hitters away, he wasn’t getting the attention he deserved.

I think we can all agree that those days are now far behind us.

Davis Martin (White Sox) +6000

It has been a year and a half since White Sox fans could claim one of the best pitchers in the American League as their own. Enter 2026, Davis Martin is doing his best to try to represent the South Side in such a category.

The 29-year-old currently has the 17th-best odds in the American League to come away with the Cy Young Award, but I think those odds would be much shorter had he been pitching for a team that is contending for a playoff spot. Luckily, these awards are not based on team performance, or at least they shouldn’t be.

Martin was coming off a 2025 in which he blew past his previous career-high inning mark of 63.1 back in 2022. In those 142.4 innings last season, he pitched to a 4.10 ERA and accumulated a 1.3 fWAR in 26 games (25 starts).

This year, Martin ranks third in all of baseball, per FanGraphs, in Pitcher fWAR, only behind Schlittler and Cristopher Sanchez. Martin’s 1.62 ERA is good for second in baseball behind Schlittler. What I find most impressive from his start to the season, and a big reason why he has been so successful into May, is his 5.2% BB-rate, which ranks in the 91st percentile in the league.

Look, I mentioned the fact that an award like the Cy Young usually is not based on the overall team performance. The purpose of this article is to highlight just how wide open this award is after the Skubal injury. With as much fluctuation as there is in the league, mentioning Martin as a potential award winner should not garner pushback from true fans of the game.

Shane McClanahan (Rays) +8000

This number is pure blasphemy and needs to be studied. For Shane McClanahan to be 21st on the odds list, mixed in with Joe Ryan, Framber Valdez, and Will Warren (who aren’t having as good a season as Shane-o-Mac), just isn’t right.

Coming into the season, we published a piece on how the lefties’ return could prove to be the difference in the Rays turning the page on the 2025 season and jumping right back into contention in 2026.

After not having appeared in a big league game since 2023, McClanahan has shown up in the new year, giving the Rays, who currently sport the best record in the American League, everything they have been missing from their rotation ever since he started to struggle with his injuries.

In his first 34.2 innings this season, McClanahan has a 2.60 ERA, striking out just under a hitter per inning, but generating whiffs at a 28% rate.

As I had mentioned with deGrom, a comeback story has the tendency to pull at the heartstrings of us fans, and likely even the voters. McClanahan is coming off a two and a half-year absence following Tommy John surgery and a nerve issue in his triceps that had him questioning whether he would even be back.

As he continues to get stronger as the season progresses, we should continue to see the confidence build in the young left-hander. While the Rays may end up limiting him in his first season back, there is no denying the fact that he is pitching like a Cy Young-caliber pitcher so far this year.