Wednesday is the day when baseball honors its top pitcher in each league with the Cy Young Award. The candidate pool for this year's awards is an impressive class, one that left a mark on the 2015 season.
American League
The American League's finalists include a pair of left-handers likely to finish in the top two. That hasn't happened in the AL since 1979 (Mike Flanagan, Tommy John and Ron Guidry finished 1-2-3).
Price would become the fourth Toronto Blue Jays pitcher to win the Cy Young Award, joining Pat Hentgen (1996), Roger Clemens (1997 and 1998) and Roy Halladay (2003). He would be the second to win the award after being traded during the regular season, joining ESPN’s Rick Sutcliffe, who won it for the Cubs in 1984.
After being traded from the Tigers to the Blue Jays on July 30, Price was one of the best pitchers in the American League. He led the league in wins (nine) and ERA (2.30) from Aug. 1 on. He finished the season with the best ERA in the AL (2.45).
Season highlight: Price’s first start for the Blue Jays was a tone-setter. In a 5-1 win over the Twins, he allowed three hits and struck out 11 in eight innings. He followed that up with seven scoreless innings in Yankee Stadium in a shutout of the Yankees. Those were two wins in an 11-game winning streak that turned the team’s season around.
Keuchel would join Mike Scott (1986) and Clemens (2004) as the only Cy Young Award winners in Houston Astros history.
Two seasons ago, the idea of Keuchel as a Cy Young finalist would have been far-reaching. He was 9-18 with a 5.20 ERA in his first two seasons. But Keuchel led the American League in wins, innings pitched and WHIP in his second straight highly effective season.
Keuchel had a couple of highly dominant stretches. He had an 0.80 ERA in his first six starts of the season and won his first six decisions.
Season highlight: Keuchel had big moments against the Yankees in both the regular season and the postseason. On June 25, he pitched a six-hit shutout with 12 strikeouts in a 4-0 win. In the AL wild-card game, he pitched six scoreless innings on three days' rest to push the Astros into the ALDS.
Gray hasn’t received the level of attention that Price and Keuchel have, but he had a strong season nonetheless. He finished in the top six in the American League in both ERA and WHIP.
Had the season ended in mid-June, Gray might have been the Cy Young favorite. He started 8-3 for the Oakland Athletics with a 1.60 ERA in his first 14 starts but posted a 3.69 ERA in his last 17 starts of 2015.
Season highlight: Gray took a no-hit bid into the eighth inning on Opening Day against the Rangers. He settled for eight scoreless one-hit innings in an 8-0 win. Gray had five starts in 2015 in which he allowed two hits or fewer, one shy of the major league lead (Jacob deGrom, six).
National League
The three National League finalists rank among the best top trios in the league in recent memory. This was the first season in which the NL had three pitchers with at least 7.5 wins above replacement (Jake Arrieta, Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw) since 1977 (Rick Reuschel, Phil Niekro and Tom Seaver).
Jake Arrieta
Arrieta would become the first Chicago Cubs pitcher to win the Cy Young since Greg Maddux in 1992.
He had one of the great finishes to a season in major league history, posting a 0.86 ERA over his final 20 starts. The Elias Sports Bureau notes that’s the lowest such ERA since earned runs became an official stat (in 1912 in the NL, 1913 in the AL).
His final numbers were amazing, a league-leading 22 wins, a 1.77 ERA (second in the majors) and 0.39 home runs per nine innings. He was at his best against the best teams, going 12-3 with a 1.48 ERA against teams that finished .500 or better.
Season highlight: On Aug. 30, Arrieta pitched a no-hitter with 12 strikeouts on Sunday Night Baseball against the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was the first by a Cubs pitcher since Carlos Zambrano in 2008. It capped a month in which he went 6-0 with an 0.43 ERA.
Zack Greinke
Greinke had a season that was one of the best by a pitcher in the past 20 years. He went 19-3 with a major league best 1.66 ERA. Amazingly, Greinke’s season ERA was below 2.00 at the end of every start he made in 2015.
He’s the fifth pitcher in the live ball era (since 1920) to have an .850 win percentage and an ERA below 2.00. The previous four pitchers to do so won the Cy Young.
If Greinke wins, it would be his second Cy Young -- his first came with the Royals in 2009, a season in which he also led his league in ERA.
Season highlight: Greinke approached Orel Hershiser’s record-setting 59-inning scoreless streak by throwing 45 ⅔ straight scoreless innings in June and July. Greinke’s stretch consisted of six straight scoreless starts, in which he struck out 42 and walked four.
Clayton Kershaw
Kershaw would become the fifth pitcher to win four Cy Young Awards, joining Roger Clemens (seven), Randy Johnson (five), Steve Carlton (four) and Greg Maddux (four).
Kershaw’s 2015 season doesn’t quite match his last couple, but he did finish with a 2.13 ERA. He went 11-1 with a 1.22 ERA in his last 17 starts of the season.
Where Kershaw did excel was in his combination of strikeouts (301), walks (42) and home runs allowed (15 in an NL-best 232 ⅔ innings pitched). He became the first pitcher to finish a season with a sub-2 fielding independent pitching (1.99) and 300 strikeouts since Pedro Martinez for the 1999 Red Sox.
Season highlight: Kershaw had a stretch of four amazing starts spanning July and August in which he shut out the Phillies, pitched eight scoreless innings against the Nationals, shut out the Mets and pitched eight scoreless innings against the Angels. In those four starts, he struck out 45 and walked one.