2026 MLB Cy Young Race — AL & NL Contenders Ranked by NUT
Cy Young voting rewards the pitcher, but ERA and win-loss records credit a lot of things the pitcher does not control — the defense behind him, the sequence his hits arrived in, the run support he got. NUT strips those out. It grades a pitcher on the three outcomes he owns almost entirely: strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed.
Here is where the 2026 races stand by that measure, with every line updated through August 23. One league is settled. The other is a coin flip.
NL Cy Young — Starters by NUT
Jacob Misiorowski is not in a race. His +3.0 NUT is the highest of any pitcher in baseball, and the gap to second is larger than the gap between second and fifth. The case is simple: 216 strikeouts against 33 walks, a 0.76 WHIP, and a 1.68 ERA that his underlying numbers fully support rather than flatter.
Where the Win Column Misleads
Cristopher Sánchez is 16-4. That is the best record among NL starters here, and in a lot of years it would be the headline of a Cy Young campaign. By NUT he is third, at +2.6.
The reason is that wins measure a team. Sánchez has thrown 168.1 innings, more than anyone on this board, and pitched well across all of them — but Misiorowski has struck out 22 more hitters in 23 fewer innings. Chase Burns makes the same point at the other end: 14-2 is a spectacular record, and it comes with 48 walks and a +1.4 NUT that puts him seventh.
AL Cy Young — Starters by NUT
This is the real race, and NUT separates the top two by 0.2 — close enough that one start can flip it. Dylan Cease and Cam Schlittler arrive at nearly the same grade by opposite routes.
Cease gets there on volume: 209 strikeouts, the most in the American League, in 144.1 innings. Schlittler gets there on control: 37 walks to Cease's 64, a 0.96 WHIP, and 14 more innings of it. NUT rewards the strikeouts slightly more than it punishes the walks, which is the entire margin. Anyone telling you this one is decided is reading a betting line, not a stat line.
The Paul Skenes Question
Paul Skenes has a 9-11 record and a 3.95 ERA, and the award conversation has moved on from him entirely. NUT has not: he is sixth among NL starters at +1.5, an A grade, and tenth among all pitchers in baseball.
The split comes from what each number counts. Skenes has 171 strikeouts in 139 innings — a rate that sits with the top of this list. His ERA says the runs scored anyway. When a strikeout rate and a run-prevention number disagree this sharply, the usual culprits are defense and sequencing, neither of which is the pitcher's doing. That does not make him a Cy Young winner this year. It does mean the collapse was smaller than the record makes it look.
The Relievers NUT Rates Highly
Mason Miller has a +2.1 NUT in 54.1 innings, which would place him fourth in the NL if he were on the starter board. He is not on it, because NUT is a counting measure — it accumulates, so 54 dominant innings and 145 dominant innings are not the same argument even when the rate is similar. Voters have never given this award to a reliever with a third of a starter's workload, and the number does not say they should. It does say Miller has been the most effective pitcher per inning in the National League.
One more name worth flagging: Shohei Ohtani has a +1.3 NUT on the mound alone in 85.2 innings, separate from anything his bat has done. That combination is the subject of the MVP race, not this one.
How NUT Grades a Pitcher
Pitching NUT is built from strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed, scaled to runs and then to a single number where 0.0 is a league-average pitcher. Defense is removed on purpose. A pitcher with elite outfielders behind him will post a better ERA than an identical pitcher without them, and Cy Young voting has historically rewarded that difference as if the pitcher earned it.
Every value on this page carries a letter grade on the same scale the app uses everywhere — S, A, B, C, D, F. If you want the mechanics, start with What Is the NUT Score or What Is FIP, which covers the defense-independent idea NUT's pitching side is built on.
Related
Both races run to Game 162, and these numbers move every night. The live pitching NUT board — last 7, last 30, or full season — is at baseballnut.app/stats, updated daily.