Can Shohei Ohtani make a push for NL Cy Young?
Yahoo Sports senior MLB analysts Jordan Shusterman and Jake Mintz discuss whether they think Shohei Ohtani could pull off winning the NL Cy Young award this season. Hear the full conversation on the "Baseball Bar-B-Cast" podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
Shohei Ohtani, or as Mike Tyson called him, Shohei Otani- Otani.
Mm-hmm making a Cy Young push.
That's the story of this man's season.
He doesn't even care about hitting.
He's just out there going through the motions at the plate, putting up an OP of nine.
All Ohtani wants to do is throw the baseball.
Can he win a Cy Young?
I'm gonna say no.
I'm gonna say probably not.
Now, to be fair, he has done He's kind of done it.
Like, it's a 1.79 ERA, 14 starts, 85 and two-thirds, striking out almost 10 nine.
He's been very good.
Jacob deGrom in 30 more innings, 25 more innings, has been better.
Yeah.
So And- There you go hey, listen, deGrom, you know, he, had a s- a start skipped.
Ohtani also, last we heard from him, had a start skipped.
He's not scheduled to start this weekend.
We've said all season he was already gonna be up against it in terms of the workload deficit he was going to have because he's only starting once a week, and now he's had a couple outings that he's, he's missed because he's been trying to be cautious or dealing with knee issues.
And so whether it's deGrom who now I also wonder where his workload is going to end up at because Ohtani might just fall out of this conversation and we're just talking about Christopher Sanchez and Jacob deGrom because it, it might end up just being more of that conversation where deGrom, you know, Sanchez is 50 innings ahead of deGrom, and how, how do voters, evaluate that?
So I think on an inning-to-inning basis, it's hard to be disappointed with what Ohtani has done, and I do still expect him to be one of the best pitchers in the league the rest of the season, but as far as winning this award, I just don't, I don't think it's, I don't think it's relevant anymore.
