Can Jacob deGrom win the CY Young Award for a losing team?

For this entire season the Mets have not been doing well. Torturing their fans with their seemingly great ability to lose games. It seems like every game that they play they learn a lot, but they keep finding a way to hit an even lower depths every loss.

But a lot of fans are still holding out hope. After all, they have got the best pitcher in baseball in the form of Jacob deGrom. Whether he is capable of leading the team to success is hard to say. That being said, some people are curious as to whether Jacob deGrom would be eligible for the CY Young Award. Can he get it despite being on a losing team? Let’s look at that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwL95zCpav8

League leading ERA

The reason why this question is being raised is due to deGrom’s pitching prowess. Out of all the baseball players out there he’s got a league leading ERA (Earned Run Average) of 1.68.

Can he win the award with a losing record

His pitching skills are second to none at the moment and his abilities compete with the best pitchers in all of baseball. But can he win the award?

First off, the Cy Young Award is an annual award awarded to the best pitches in each section of baseball. That means an award goes to 2 pitchers in Major League Baseball, the American League, and the National League.

But just because it’s an award that is awarded once a year doesn’t mean that it has extensive criteria. In fact, the only real criteria is that the player needs to be a pitcher. This is obvious, but some may not consider that this also includes both closers and relievers as well.

In the end, how a pitcher is awarded is solely based on votes by members that are in the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, along with a representative from every team. This system was set in place at the start of the 2010 season and is still in use. Voters vote on who the first, through fifth best pitchers from each league are to be placed.

Before that system there was a point system based on votes as well. The only difference is based on what position the player deserved was awarded points based on the number of votes for that position.

Andre Dawson won 1987 MVP on last place team

As you can see a lot of these systems change and most notably is that there aren’t specific criteria for a pitcher being required to be part of a winning team. In terms of the Cy Young Award, the voters aren’t looking exclusively at the team as a whole, but at the pitcher specifically.

Because of this, you have examples of closers and relievers winning the award over the years. Not only that but players can still receive awards despite the team being an utter failure. Other examples of this is Andre Dawson who won MVP in 1987 despite being on the last place team for that season.