The only question about the American League Cy Young race was whether Justin Verlander would win it unanimously, and that was resolved in the affirmative on Wednesday.
Verlander captured all of the 30 first-place votes from BBWAA ballots for his third Cy Young Award, making him the fourth-oldest winner in league history. Dylan Cease had to settle for second place ...
... which is also the best finish by a White Sox pitcher since Esteban Loaiza, who finished runner-up to Roy Halladay by going 21-9 with a 2.90 ERA over 34 starts for the White Sox during his dream season in 2003. Hopefully Cease follows Loiaza's precedent no further, whether because of the lack of comparable seasons afterward, or the prison sentence for drug trafficking after his career.
What's a little striking is how a runner-up season doesn't cover the kind of ground it used to. Loiaza made 34 starts and covered 226.1 innings, or one out fewer than Chris Sale recorded in his fifth-place finish in Cy Young voting in 2016.
Cease threw just 184 innings over his 32 starts for an average of 5.75 innings an outing. Sale averaged 7.08 innings during his last season with the Sox, meaning he lasted four extra outs per start. It's more a comment on the era than Cease, because he threw nine more innings than Verlander, but it might explain why it hasn't resonated as an equal triumph to Sale's peak seasons with the Sox. (Or maybe 2022 was just so tainted by everything around it that nothing merits a real celebration. The White Sox didn't even acknowledge it on their social pages.)
Cease managed to finish second in Cy Young voting despite leading baseball in walks with 78, which is one of those things that's secretly encouraging. Sure, he often walks a fine line, and a pitcher who doesn't have his talent might get burned by all the extra pitches and baserunners ... unless Cease slashes his walk rate by a few percentage points, and then he's even better?
The latter scenario seems like it's too greedy, because nobody predicted Cease reaching the podium when the argument was whether the Sox should trade him or Dane Dunning after the 2020 season. He's made giant leaps in consecutive years to render to bury that argument twice over, and if he's improved twice, then further fine-tuning can't be counted out.
I'd personally trade a little bit of Cease regression for Lucas Giolito and/or Lance Lynn returning to down-ballot Cy Young consideration themselves. Cease's tendency to fall into deep counts for reasons bad (occasional mechanical lapses) and good (he's hard to put into play, period) makes it difficult to count on him increasing his innings total much further, which means that two other starters will have to rediscover their ability to shoulder loads. If Cease wants to take this as yet another personal challenge to conquer, so be it.
