Cleveland Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase had perhaps the most dominant season by a reliever in major-league history. He came as close as any relief pitcher has in 15 years to winning a Cy Young Award.
Which is to say, he didn’t come close at all.
Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal was a unanimous and deserving winner on Wednesday. Clase finished a distant third. But even a figurative bronze counts as a remarkable achievement for a reliever in balloting for an award that has increasingly become the exclusive domain of starting pitchers. Clase is the first reliever to turn in a top-three finish since Francisco Rodriguez in 2008. No reliever had even cracked the top five since Kenley Jansen in 2017. And, of course, no reliever has won the award since Eric Gagne in 2003. The last AL reliever to win the Cy Young Award was Dennis Eckersley in 1992.
Measure for measure, Clase joined Eckersley on the very short list of greatest relief seasons in history. Clase posted a 0.61 ERA in 74 appearances. He led the AL with 47 saves. He issued just 10 walks. His Baseball Savant page looks like the standardized test scores for a child prodigy: He ranked in at least the 97th percentile in pitching run value (98th), fastball run value (99th), expected ERA (99th), chase percentage (98th), walk percentage (98th), barrel percentage (97th) and hard-hit percentage (98th). He was the major reason the Guardians finished 82-0 when leading after eight innings.
He even recorded a save in the All-Star Game.
There are just three relievers in history who have thrown at least 70 innings and finished with an ERA of 0.61 or lower: Clase, Eckersley in 1990 (0.61) and Fernando Rodney in 2012 (0.60).
But Clase had no shot at joining Eckersley as a Cy Young winner. That’s because there’s been a clear shift among Baseball Writers’ Association of America voters when it comes to sizing up their Cy Young candidates. The award has become a value proposition. And when it comes to stats like bWAR, even a relief pitcher who has a truly transcendent season has no chance of measuring up.
Clase generated 4.5 bWAR, which was highly impressive. It was the most by a relief pitcher since Jonathan Papelbon in 2006. But in 2024, there were nine starting pitchers who generated more.
I’ve been thinking about writing this piece for a while, and before Clase’s 2024 season, I had planned to cite the example of Félix Bautista’s finish in the 2023 AL Cy Young voting. Baltimore’s Bautista was far and away the best relief pitcher in the American League in 2023. He posted a 1.48 ERA, a 277 ERA+ and recorded 33 saves. He appeared on just three of 30 ballots — all fifth-place votes — and finished with three points. Obviously, Bautista had no shot at winning the award. But that wasn’t the part that resonated with me. What stood out was that Bautista couldn’t even beat out starting pitchers who might otherwise be considered marginal candidates. Minnesota’s Pablo López turned in a perfectly fine season in the Twins rotation in which he went 11-8 with a 3.66 ERA. He finished with 11 points in the balloting.
Bautista generated 3.0 bWAR. Lopez generated 3.3.
It’s gotten to the point where it’s almost silly to even bother putting relievers on the Cy Young ballot. They are apples in an orchard of oranges.
Here’s another fresh example from this past season: Ryan Helsley set the St. Louis Cardinals’ single-season record by recording a major league-leading 49 saves — an impressive achievement considering that multiple Cardinals (Lee Smith, Bruce Sutter) are in the Hall of Fame. Helsley was easily the most valuable reliever in the NL. He was mentioned on just three of 30 ballots (one fourth-place vote, two fifth-place votes).
But like Clase, Helsley never had a chance. Even in recent voting years when there has been no obvious candidate, or when the vote was split among multiple starting pitchers, relievers have had no path to contending for the honor.
Based on voting trends, it’s pretty safe to assume that no relief pitcher will win the Cy Young Award again.
None of this is necessarily a bad thing. There’s no injustice in relief pitchers failing to merit a place at the top — or anywhere, really — on Cy Young ballots. It’s not an oversight or flawed logic that explains why no relief pitcher has received a first-place Cy Young vote since 2016 (Zach Britton) or why a reliever can have a truly transcendent season and barely merit anything beyond a fifth-place vote.
The Cy Young Award has always been an honor principally reserved for starting pitchers. The only thing that has changed is that the principles have pretty much become unbreakable now.
So maybe the BBWAA should do something about it. Maybe it’s time to create a new award to honor the best relief pitcher in each league.
It’s true that MLB already has annual awards for the league’s best firemen: the Mariano Rivera AL Reliever of the Year Award and the Trevor Hoffman NL Reliever of the Year Award were first issued in 2014 and replaced the Delivery Man of the Year Award, which had its beginnings in 2005. The Rolaids Relief Man Award, in addition to creating a lot of brand awareness for antacid medication, was given out from 1976 to 2012.
But MLB’s current awards are voted on by a panel of retired relief pitchers. They do not involve the participation of BBWAA’s voting members. And the BBWAA awards — MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, Manager of the Year — continue to be the gold standard among the league’s postseason honors. Problematic as it might be, the BBWAA awards are now the basis for enticements like the prospect promotion incentive that can net a team an extra draft pick. Paul Skenes, who was named the NL Rookie of the Year earlier this week, received an extra year of service time as a result.
The BBWAA awards are the postseason awards. They are the most historic. And they are the nearest to being above reproach.
Valuing relief pitchers has always been a tricky proposition for BBWAA members who are eligible to vote for the Hall of Fame, and it’ll be interesting to see whether Billy Wagner is able to break through next month in his final year on the ballot. But clearly, the association has demonstrated that relief pitchers are worthy of the honor. The only unanimous inductee in the history of Hall of Fame voting isn’t a charismatic and transcendent star center fielder like Ken Griffey Jr. or a durable, generation-spanning rotation presence like Nolan Ryan. It’s longtime New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera.
Here’s the thing: Rivera never won a BBWAA award. And that makes the lack of a BBWAA award for relievers seem like something that can and should be addressed.
(Rivera finished as high as second in Cy Young balloting in 2005, when he received eight out of 30 first-place votes. Bartolo Colon, who finished 21-8 with a 3.48 ERA in 33 starts, received 17 first-place votes and won the award going away. Colon’s ERA is the fourth highest by a Cy Young winner in the award’s history.)
Here’s the other thing to consider: Relief pitchers have never been more important than they are in today’s game. They are pitching more innings than ever. They were changing the composition of major-league rosters so drastically that rule changes had to be put into place to cap the number of pitchers a team can carry. Even with those limitations, one-third of your typical major-league team is comprised of relievers. And for one-third of the league, there’s no chance to be a legitimate candidate to win a BBWAA award.
Even a dominant rookie reliever has no shot at an award. Just look at this year’s AL balloting. A’s closer Mason Miller struck out 104 in 65 innings — the highest strikeout rate among all big leaguers to throw at least 50 innings — and posted a 2.49 ERA while recording 28 saves. Miller appeared on just eight of 30 ROY ballots, received one first-place vote and finished fourth with 16 points. Yankees starting pitcher Luis Gil, who went 15-7 with a 3.50 ERA, received 15 first-place votes and narrowly outpointed Orioles outfielder Colton Cowser to win the award.
Gil generated 3.1 bWAR. Miller generated 2.4.
One more shiny apple among the citrus groves.
My colleague at The Athletic, Jayson Stark, proposed adding a BBWAA award for relievers some years back. His presentation didn’t gain traction. The primary argument against was the concern that there weren’t enough eligible BBWAA members to fill out voting committees for an additional award. But since then, the association opened membership to MLB.com reporters. There are more international media members who have an active card and cover games. There are more “non-legacy media” outlets who employ full-time writers and reporters. In some markets, the problem has become that there aren’t enough voting assignments to go around.
The BBWAA’s awards are valuable — so much so that Major League Baseball offered to guarantee a certain amount of access (to minor leaguers, to coaching staffs, etc.) to association members in exchange for the rights to fold the awards into an annual Oscars-like show to be held in Las Vegas. A membership-wide vote rejected the league’s proposal. But the exercise demonstrated just how much the BBWAA’s awards truly matter.
So let’s expand them. It’s time for an AL and NL Reliever of the Year.
Close the deal.
(Top photo of Emmanuel Clase: Jason Miller / Getty Images)
