For as dominant as Gerrit Cole has been across more than a decade in the big leagues, he’s somehow never won a Cy Young award, twice finishing as the runner-up with three other top-five finishes.
If the current betting odds are any indication, that could change this season.
The Yankees ace is the clear favorite (+250) to win this year’s AL Cy Young award for the first time in his 11-year career, according to the latest odds at BetMGM.
He’s priced just ahead of Angels phenom Shohei Ohtani (+400) and Rays ace Shane McClanahan (+700), who are the only other pitchers dealing at shorter than 10/1 odds.
It feels like a matter of time before Cole finally brings home the league’s most coveted pitching honor, which has eluded him despite his dominance in Houston and New York.
And he’s on pace for his best season yet.
Through his first seven starts, the 32-year-old hurler owns the best ERA (1.35) and FIP (2.16) of his already brilliant career, and his WHIP (0.900) ranks second behind only his stellar 2019 season, when he finished second in Cy Young voting just behind then-teammate Justin Verlander.
He’s done all that while throwing the most innings in baseball (46 ²/₃ ) with the AL’s best fWAR (1.9) entering Thursday’s action.
Cole is also one of just four pitchers across both leagues with a complete-game shutout and one of just three yet to allow a home run — and he’s the only pitcher to pull off both feats.
Clearly, he’s been a bona fide stud through the first month of the season.
Still, is he worth betting at such a short price?
While the surface stats are impressive, there are some reasons for concern, too.
His strikeout rate (29.4 percent) is below 32 percent for the first time since he was traded from the Pirates in 2017, and his walk rate (7.9 percent) is by far the highest in that stretch, too.
Perhaps his renewed emphasis on his fastball — which he’s throwing a career-high 56.9 percent of the time — is making him more predictable on the mound, even as he’s preventing runs at a career rate.
And while he’s attacking batters with a career-best 72.3 percent first-pitch strike rate, his whiff rate (25.4 percent) is also the worst since 2017, and he’s throwing fewer pitches in the zone (47.1 percent) than at any point in the Statcast era.
Advanced catch-all metrics are also skeptical of his sterling ERA: he ranks outside of the top 10 among AL starters in xFIP (3.46) and SIERA (3.55), and even his xERA (2.94) doesn’t crack the top five.
He also sits 20th in the AL in swinging strike rate (11.1 percent), which is downright puzzling for a player whose swing-and-miss potential has underpinned a potential Hall of Fame career.
Learn all you need to know about MLB Betting
- Read about the Best Baseball Betting Sites
- Learn all about How to Bet on Baseball
- Get the latest World Series Odds
Let’s be clear: Cole deserves to be the favorite at this point in this season, if only because his dominant ERA gives him the inside track for an award that almost always rewards the leader in that metric by season’s end.
And with his incredible track record to this point, he’s among the safest bets to sustain it, too.
But there are reasons to doubt that his early returns will carry across an entire season, especially if his stuff isn’t as sharp as it once was.
This year’s run environment punishes contact as much if not more than any season in recent memory, and Cole certainly has a history of getting hit hard when he isn’t missing bats.
That’s to say nothing of the skyrocketing injury rate for pitchers, which makes it tough to lay short odds on any of the front-runners in this year’s race.
There’s a solid chance Cole finally breaks through for his first Cy Young award this season, but there’s very little upside betting on it at this point.