Dodgers: Hyun-Jin Ryu unlikely to win the NL Cy Young award

Former Dodgers’ southpaw Hyun-Jin Ryu is a finalist for the National League Cy Young award. Can Ryu beat the odds and take home the award?

Hyun-Jin Ryu is no longer with the Dodgers as he waits in free agency, but he is a finalist for the National League Cy Young award as a Dodger.  The award will be announced tomorrow and the three finalists for the NL award are Jacob deGrom, Hyun-Jin Ryu, and Max Scherzer.  The three will most likely finish in that order too.

The Cy Young case for Hyun-Jin Ryu is rather weak compared to Jacob deGrom.  Ryu did lead all of baseball with a 2.32 ERA and 1.1 BB/9IP ratio but other than those two statistics he falls behind Jacob deGrom in nearly every other category.  deGrom’s ERA was not much higher at 2.43 and when it comes to FIP, he bests Ryu with a 2.67 FIP compared to 3.10.

Then there is the strikeout ratio.  While strikeouts don’t necessarily show the true level of a pitcher, Jacob deGrom had a strikeout ratio of 11.2 K/9IP in 2019 while Ryu fell short of that with a 8.0 K/9IP rating.  While strikeouts are not everything, Cy Young voting has traditionally favored the hard-throwing pitchers who compile ridiculous strikeout totals when the numbers are similar.

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In terms of WAR, the numbers are also not close between Ryu and deGrom.  Jacob deGrom trailed only Gerrit Cole with a WAR of 7.0.  Ryu came in at a much lower 4.8 which ranks him 12th in MLB right behind fellow rotation mate Walker Buehler.

If Hyun-Jin Ryu had finished his season with an ERA under two, he would have been a slam dunk for the NL Cy Young award but his second-half struggles left his ERA too close to deGrom’s to win with Jacob having superior stats otherwise.  Ryu had an ERA of 1.73 entering the All-Star break but in the second half, he had an ERA of 3.18.

The month of August was when Ryu really hit a wall.  He posted an ERA of 7.48 and failed to make it through five innings in two of his four starts that month.  In back-to-back starts against the Yankees and Diamondbacks, Ryu allowed seven earned runs in each start and allowed three home runs to the Yankees.

While Hyun-Jin rebounded with a good September, August turned out to be the month that wrecked his Cy Young chances.  If 2019 was Ryu’s last season with the Dodgers, he had a heck of a finish with the blue but in terms of his Cy Young chances, he doesn’t have much of a chance.  Jacob deGrom should easily win the NL Cy Young award for his stellar 2019 season.