With just over a month left in the regular season, I thought I’d take a look at contenders for the NL Cy Young award. A few criteria should be set out.

• The eventual Cy Young winner needs to have wins; not necessarily lots of them, but equal to or more than the other guys. Case in point: last year’s winner Brandon Webb. He won the award with a 16-8 record. Aaron Harang of the Reds was pretty good last year, but I think his losses and ERA cost him a few votes.
• Low ERA. Even if the wins aren’t there, a low ERA helps a lot. Maddux won the award one year with a 16-6 record, but his ERA was:1.56; A stat I like to look at is ERA/WHIP differential. Maddux’s was .66 that year he won when he had 16 games. Did I mention that he also had 10 complete games?
• Strikeouts; WHIP; Walks and HR allowed are all important stats, but they aren’t as critical as Wins and ERA.

So the front-line contenders are: Tim Hudson, Carlos Zambrano, Cole Hamels, Jake Peavy, Brad Penny, Brandon Webb

Outside chance: Aaron Harang, Chris Young, John Maine, John Smoltz

• Based on wins, Young and Smoltz gotta go. Webb is on thin ice regarding wins, but his scoreless streak more than compensates for the difference in wins. While Young leads in quite a few categories like WHIP, ERA and batting average against (BAA), it’s hard to include a guy who has 5 fewer wins than the leader. Young missed a couple starts when he was on the DL, but it still won’t bring him that close to the leader. Smoltz…no wins.

• Low ERA…who doesn’t have it? Zambrano, Hamels, Maine and Harang. (In fact, Zambrano would have been eliminated anyway because he gives up too many walks…way too many. And for those who say it’s only one category, well Russ Ortiz had 21 wins for the Braves in 2oo3 but he gave up 102 walks. In fact Ortiz finished 4th that year in the voting. ) So wins and ERA are important. Can’t have one without the other…well you can but it’s stiff competition this year. Maine and Hamels have given up 18 and 25 HRs respectively. No chance.

Based on stats, the order of the remaining contenders:

1. Jake Peavy- San Diego Padres
2. Brad Penny- Los Angeles Dodgers
3. Tim Hudson- Atlanta Braves
4. Brandon Webb- Arizona Diamondbacks

Note that 3 of the 4 contenders based on stats are based in the punchless NL West. I pick Peavy to win because he has quite a few things working in his favor, especially Petco Park and the fact that Penny normally has a second-half meltdown. Hudson has been great and is resembling the pitcher the Braves traded for when he was in Oakland. Webb is the odd man out. He’s putting together some great peripheral stats, like the scoreless streak, complete games and shutouts. Where it really counts though, he’s behind the other three, and his losses are starting to mount up.

It’s an interesting race for the Cy Young. Let’s see what happens.