We can start with the easy part which is figuring out the top two contenders are Chris Sale (the reason this article is appearing on this website) and Corey Kluber of the Indians. You could, should you want to do such a thing, make a case for Luis Severino of the Yankees, Justin Verlander of the Tigers/Astros or even our own Craig Kimbrel, but realistically none of those guys are likely to get any first place votes. Relievers don’t typically win the Cy Young in seasons when there is an outstanding and thus deserving starter unless they do something insane like not allowing a run all year. And even then, they usually don’t win. Kimbrel has been fantastic this season but he has given up 10 runs so, even with a strikeout percentage over 50 percent, it’s not happening for him. Verlander has been fantastic in the second half and had he put together two halves like like it he’d be among the frontrunners to win, but he didn’t, and in fact his first half was pretty mediocre. Throwing 104 innings of 4.73 ERA ball, even when you follow it up with excellence, isn’t going to get it done. So Kimbrel and Verlander are out. We’ll leave Severino in for now and move on to the next paragraph.

Let’s now take a step into the weeds for a moment and mention that defining “best” is, at best (see what I did there?) difficult, and at worst problematic and impossible. If you’re of the sabermetric sort, we could agree that Wins Above Replacement is the way to go, but then which one? There are three and they’re all calculated differently. On the other end of the spectrum there are pitcher wins, which to me are statistical garbage, but to others have varying relevance. This is why this kind of thing is never as clear cut as we’d like it to be. Sometimes there isn’t an answer to the question we ask, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t spend time trying to learn the answer. So here we are.

This is Baseball Prospectus so let’s start there. By WARP, Chris Sale is the leader by about a half win (8.09 WARP to 7.67 for Kluber). Severino is fourth in the AL with 5.45 behind the two above and the Rays’ Chris Archer. Archer has had a pretty impressive season but two things are holding him back from being a finalist here. His ERA is four point who cares that’s too high to win the Cy Young Award, and he’s 9-11. Pitcher wins are, as previously noted, statistical garbage, but a losing record is going to be a tough hurdle to overcome especially in comparison to his competition. But back to BP. So Sale has a half WARP lead over Kluber, but you could make a counter argument for Kluber which is this: Sale has thrown 18.1 more innings. That’s typically cited as a reason to vote for Sale, but with their WAR figures so close, it’s Kluber who has been more valuable on a per-inning basis.

So there’s that. But this actually gets more interesting as we move on to other forms of WAR. Over at FanGraphs they have Sale leading Kluber and Severino 8.2 to 6.9 and 5.6, respectively. So by their math, Sale has been worth over a win more than Kluber and at that point we get beyond the vagaries of the formulas and start to have a real difference in value. But then we get to Baseball Reference. They have Kluber ahead of Sale, 7.6 to 6.2, with Severino down at 5.2 so that tells us two things. First, Severino ain’t winning this so enough about of him. Second, huh? I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of how these stats are calculated, so instead, let’s do something that we probably shouldn’t do and add all the WAR numbers up. When you do that, Sale gets to 22.5 and Kluber gets to 22.2. With that little math mistake buried 800 words deep, let’s just say that the totality of the WAR numbers have Kluber and Sale as extremely close in value, too close to make any kind of decision on who is better.

So let’s go more mainstream and see if that helps. Both pitchers have 17 wins (as of this writing), both are striking out right around 35 percent of the hitters they face (Sale is at 36.3 percent, Kluber at 34.6 percent) and walking about five percent (Sale is at five percent, Kluber at 4.7 percent). Both have given up 20 homers, three wild pitches, and neither has balked. To this point it seems like a draw, but there are two separators. The first is Sale has 300 strikeouts (Kluber is at 252). Even if it did happen in this era of increased strikeouts, reaching 300 strikeouts is a serious and notable accomplishment. Unfortunately for Sale, that pretty neat accomplishment doesn’t necessarily mean he’s better than Kluber. Still, voters (to the extent we can know what they’ll do) might think it does. That is, if they can get over the second thing, which is the difference in ERA. Kluber’s ERA is 2.35 which leads the American League by a lot, 0.40 over the second place pitcher who happens to be Chris Sale.

It feels bizarre to pin the outcome of this on two starts after about 30 have already elapsed for each pitcher, but that’s how close it is. It’s close enough that two starts matter, one way or the other.

That’s a monumental advantage for Kluber. Voters will probably see it and vote for Kluber, but here’s the thing: by FIP it’s Sale who has the huge advantage, 2.19 to Kluber’s 2.46! But by DRA, it’s Kluber who is up, 2.00 to 2.12!

[head explodes]

Taking this all in as much as I can with an exploded head, it seems to me that while he’s been on the mound, Kluber has probably been the incrementally better pitcher. So the answer to all of this depends in part on how you value the extra 18.1 innings that Sale has thrown and in part on what we don’t yet know, namely what happens in the next two starts that each pitcher has before the season ends. It feels bizarre to pin the outcome of this on two starts after about 30 have already elapsed for each pitcher, but that’s how close it is. It’s close enough that two starts matter, one way or the other.

Kluber’s next two will be in Seattle on Sunday and at home against the Chicago White Sox, though the Indians might hold him out in preparation for the playoffs. Sale’s next two scheduled starts are at home against the Blue Jays and Astros, though like Kluber, Sale may not take the hill at all for the second one. So maybe it isn’t two starts at all, but one more start.

For now, if forced to vote, I’d pick Sale because of the extra innings he’s thrown, the lower FIP, and, I’ll admit, because I think the 300 Ks is pretty darn cool. I had hoped to finish this piece off by making a definitive statement. I had hoped to show who was really the better pitcher. But it’s close. It’s extremely close! It’s so close that there really isn’t a correct answer. At least not right now, and with likely only one or two starts remaining for each pitcher, probably forever.

Photo by Patrick McDermott – USA TODAY Sports

However, thanks to Sunday Night Baseball this previous weekend, a new, more viral hot take emerged.

Vote now: Who should win the AL Cy Young Award? Corey Kluber or Chris Sale https://t.co/AFEh9Hy9Re

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) September 2, 2017

See, the fact that the poll existed was bad enough. But the 60/40 split for Corey Kluber? That is absolutely and utterly absurd.

There should be no reason why anyone should think those two are even close in the race for the American League Cy Young Award, much less have Kluber on top. But here we are, debating something that shouldn’t being a debate, and me, having to reinforce the idea that Chris Sale is the clear-cut Cy Young award winner right now – and it’s not close.

So let’s start with the basics. Counting stats:

At first, you can kind of see the basis of the argument. Kluber has fewer hits and earned runs, practically the same amount of walks, and a strikeout total that’s (relative to the rest of the AL) comparable to Sale. Add some critical thinking to the mix, and that argument falls apart rather quickly. One thing you should notice is that there’s a 21 inning difference between the two here, due to the face that Kluber was placed on the disabled list on May 3rd due to lower back discomfort, and did not return until June 1st, so that’s one month’s difference. As we’ll get to in a bit, that makes the 48 strikeout difference in their totals loom larger. To reach Sale’s strikeout total at the same amount of innings, Kluber will have to record a strikeout for 48 of the next 63 outs. That’s not exactly feasible, and any attempt at that would certainly worsen several of the other stats.

Holding worse counting stats against Sale because he’s pitched more innings isn’t fair, so let’s jump into the rates:

This is where we see the scales start tipping in Sale’s favor. Outside of ERA, Sale holds a lead – however marginal – in the rest of the categories. You see how Sale has been more efficient in recording strikeouts, and why that 48-strikeout difference we saw earlier is telling. Sale’s been the recipient of some bad luck as well, with that 35-point difference in FIP being the biggest gap in this group, and he might be due for a little bit of a correction. This isn’t some massive victory for the Sale camp here, but this one’s leaning more toward the southpaw than it is Kluber.

Now, time for the value stats:

Sale has a clear lead in BP’s WARP, and the lefty is just running away with it in Fangraphs’ WAR, as he’s even beating Jose Altuve by a full win in that statistic. However, Baseball Reference sees it the other way with their WAR stat, for reasons that aren’t exactly clear. Unlike the rate stats, this one’s pretty far on Sale’s side. You can see that Chris Sale is the obvious leader for Cy Young right now, and it would take a sizable collapse to let Kluber come even. Yes, injuries suck and you can’t control them, but a month gone is a month where you’re not adding any extra value.

So why is there even a debate? There’s a couple reasons why this is even being brought up, especially now.

Firstly is plain old recency bias. Since the All-Star break, Kluber has been dominant, posting a 2.27 ERA and 2.71 FIP with two complete games. However, Sale has matched him step-for-step, and even though his ERA in that span is 3.05, that’s only a difference of two earned runs. So the gap shrinks every time you look a little harder. What people aren’t noticing is how these two aces give up their runs. Kluber hasn’t had a scoreless outing since June 24th, but more often than not, he’ll keep the other team to fewer than three runs in any given start. Sale doesn’t spread out the earned runs like that. When he gets hit, he gets hit hard. His runs come in big, notable bunches. The games in the second half between top AL contenders are the ones people tend to pay more attention to, and when Sale gets shelled in one of them, it’ll become a bigger deal than it usually is. This is all despite the fact that in the first half of the season, Sale was unquestionably better in nearly every category. People are questioning what these two have done lately, not what they’ve done as a whole, and it’s skewing how they should be viewed.

The second and more insidious reason is narrative crafting. I know I’m about to sound like some right-wing conspiracy theorist here, but look at the tweet above. Look at how the pundits acted during the last couple weeks. It wasn’t a “wow, Sale’s really running away with it!” reaction, it was “hey Kluber’s been great, Cy Young, yeah?”. Look, I get that it might be a little bland with the award races right now. Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge are Rookie of the Year locks, Altuve and Trout are battling for MVP again, Max Scherzer is leading the NL Cy Young race, and everyone’s just waiting Giancarlo Stanton to hit 60 homers so they can write him in for NL MVP. But by no means does that mean you have to concoct this drivel. You want a narrative? BP’s own Mike Gianella has a suggestion. It’s not hard. It even brings up the old debate of if a starter is deserving of an MVP award over a position player. So there’s something different and better to yell at each other about.

I get the Kluber talk. He’s had an amazing season! But there’s a difference between amazing and otherworldly, and the latter is the season Chris Sale is having. We have to include the entire season in our judgments, and we can’t disregard what Chris Sale has already done to uplift Corey Kluber. Just because Sale isn’t obscenely dominant right now does not mean he’s slipping, and to think that he’s lost out to Kluber because of that is idiocy. There is no debate, nor should there be.

Photo by Kevin Sousa – USA TODAY Sports

Players get hurt, players have bad runs, and teams hit patches where it seems every single player can’t do something for a month or more. The crazy thing about baseball is that that stuff happens and it doesn’t mean the team isn’t any good. There was a period of time where, over an 82 game span, the 2004 Red Sox went 41-41. That’s more than half a season of the greatest, most important Red Sox team of all time playing like an utterly forgettable also-ran. In a more specific and urgent sense, none of the stuff that has happened to the 2017 Red Sox is disqualifying for overall success, and indeed it isn’t difficult to see how this team could end up being really good. So let’s look at that!

How could the 2017 Red Sox be really good? To me, this all starts with Chris Sale. Sale isn’t peak Pedro, but he’s as close as Boston has come since the greatest of all time left town. By FanGraphs WAR, the top two seasons ever by a Red Sox starting pitcher are Pedro’s 1999 and 2000 in that order. The next four are by Roger Clemens and the four after that are all by Cy Young. Pedro’s best begins at 11.6 WAR and Young’s worst of his best is 7.7 WAR. Sale is at 6.5 now, and on pace for roughly two more wins between now and the end of the season. That would put him in fourth place all time, ahead of all of Young’s seasons and ahead of three of the Rocket’s four. That’s the kind of amazing season Chris Sale is having: better than any season Cy Young ever had in Boston and better than almost every season from maybe the greatest pitcher ever in Clemens. Now, imagine that guy (Sale) pitching twice in a best-of-five series, or three times in a best-of-seven series. There is a very real opportunity for Sale to have the kind of post-season impact previously reserved for Madison Bumgarner.

After Sale, imagine a healthy David Price! Yes, Drew Pomeranz has been fantastic this season, as good as anyone could’ve hoped, and he’d be fine starting game two, but he’s no healthy David Price, and neither is Rick Porcello or Eduardo Rodriguez. I said at the beginning of the season that David Price’s regular season almost didn’t matter. What mattered is how he pitches when the playoffs come around. His latest arm ailment throws that into question but if Price can get healthy enough to be the Red Sox number two starter, Boston can get three Sale/Price starts in a five game series and five in a seven game series. In other words, the only way the Red Sox lose a playoff round is if someone beats either Sale or Price. While you’re thinking how beatable Price is, remember we’re talking about a pitcher who put up a 2.52 ERA in July while striking out 25 percent of hitters and walking just 6.5 percent. That’s a heck of a number two. Cleveland’s starting staff can’t compete with that and neither can Houston’s, and that’s before we’ve even discussed what Eduardo Rodriguez or Drew Pomeranz can do.

The main competition for the Red Sox in the AL this season comes from the Indians, Astros, and Yankees. You could argue that the Red Sox advantage in starting pitching isn’t so big because the Indians have Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco (and they do), while the Astros have Dallas Keuchel and Lance McCullers (and they do). Except neither first starter is in the same league as Chris Sale (though Kluber isn’t far off), and neither second starter is nearly as good as a healthy David Price. If Price comes back healthy, he represents a huge advantage for the Red Sox in the post-season.

The same could also be said of Craig Kimbrel. We’ve all seen the impact relievers can have in the post-season, and with Kimbrel authoring one of the best reliever seasons we’ve seen in Boston in a long time, the opportunity for him to have an out-sized impact on the Red Sox’s postseason fortunes exists. The fact that manager John Farrell has occasionally been willing to use Kimbrel for longer outings and earlier in games when the leverage is higher during the regular season, and that bodes well for the same strong usage patterns in the playoffs. The fact that the Red Sox bullpen has been so good this season doesn’t hurt either, as they are equipped to cover for Kimbrel in the ninth should he be needed earlier in the game.

Finally we get to the offense which, there’s really no other way to put it, has underwhelmed this season. Coming off a July that saw Boston collectively hit a profoundly mediocre .248/.315/.367 (and honestly I’m shocked it’s that high), the mood surrounding the offense was understandably pessimistic. However, in the seven games since July ended (with six of those admittedly coming against the garbage White Sox), Boston has hit .288/.357/.559. They’re not that good they’re absolutely able to get that hot for periods of time, such as, oh I don’t know, five or seven game stretches.

Individually, we’ve seen odd seasons from Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts featuring less power than we know is there. The same could be said, in fact, of Jackie Bradley, Dustin Pedroia, Mitch Moreland, and even though maybe unfairly, Andrew Benintendi. That’s quite a group of players for whom a collective small bump towards career average could mean a substantial uptick in team offensive production.

Put it all together and you’ve got a team with a potentially dominating top of the rotation, a fantastic bullpen (and imagine, if Price does get healthy, how adding Pomeranz to the pen would look), and offense that’s over due for a break out. The ’04 team’s comeback against the Yankees, the ’07 team’s comeback against the Indians, and pretty much every damn thing about the 2013 team teach us that in the baseball playoffs you never know what can happen. But it’s not all luck, despite Billy Beane’s famous statement. Having Madison Bumgarner can help. Having Keith Foulke doesn’t hurt. The Red Sox have reasonable facsimiles of those guys, and a lineup with the capability to get moving at a more productive clip. It’s not hard to squint into the sun and see this Red Sox team doing something we haven’t seen since the august October of 2013. So when it happens, if it happens, you can be shocked, you can be surprised, you can be euphoric, but don’t say nobody ever saw it coming.

Photo by Bob DeChiara – USA TODAY Sports

Division Winners

Postseason

#hardware

• Four teams are unanimous picks for their division, with just the two-man carousel in the NL East and the AL West party getting different results.
• Of the Astros, Blue Jays, Mariners, and Rangers, one’s gotta go. With our staff, it’s usually the Mariners. Sorry, Seattle.
• Devereaux says the AL MVP award should be named after Trout from now on, and I can’t disagree.
• He also said the NL Cy Young should just be named after Kershaw as well. See above reaction.
• Slavin’s Margot pick for NL ROY is, as he tells it, “the first dose of retribution for Trader Dave”. That one made me laugh.

Craig forgive me for using in-season WAR as a measuring stick, but it was hard not to notice that Price merely ranked as the best pitcher in all of baseball, which… is good. That’s a good thing. Ricky Bobby would be proud: He’s first, and everybody else is last. (As of today, he’s actually in second place, so just trust me when I say he was in first on Monday.)

ESPN’s award predictor thinks Porcello is the favorite, but I think the historical voting patterns that “predict” these things are likely out of date. I don’t think Porcello will win, or I didn’t until last night, when it became a stronger possibility, both statistically and narrative-wise. Now I’m not so sure about being not so sure, which serves me right for daring to write this a day early… but I still think Price is a better candidate, good stories be damned.

I also do not think Price will win, because he has a high enough ERA to be disqualifying to most voters. It’s currently 3.91, which is not good. It is basically the only statistic of his that is not good, and while we have moved past win-loss records as singularly qualifying or disqualifying for the award, I don’t think we’re there for ERA — nor have we needed to be, as for the most part there have been better pitchers vying for the award with better lines than Price’s this year.

But this year is not most years, and this year Price may actually be the best option despite “earning” nearly four runs per nine innings for his opponents. You would likely not be reading this website if you didn’t believe in the vitality of advanced stats, so if you believe a 4 ERA is a nonstarter for a Cy Young candidate, you’re best off stopping now.

If you are still here, it turns out that by simply by replacing ERA with anything better turns Price’s season into something special. BP uses Deserved Run Average — which, semantically speaking, seems no worse or different than Earned Run Average, but it’s best I don’t get into the weeds on that one. By DRA, Price is, at the time of this writing, in a virtual tie with Chris Sale at the top of the AL leaderboard. That is a fancy way of saying he’s behind by a few hundredths of a point. Sue me.

Porcello’s start last night really threw me for a loop, but it’s still clear that if you look at any numbers beyond ERA (which I’ve covered) and wins (to which we ought to be immune), Price is a better choice than the Pork Chop. Why don’t we call Porcello “Pork Chop,” by the way? Seems like a missed opportunity. Anyhoo… adding in DRA, here’s Price versus P-Chop, which seems pretty relevant today.

Porcello: 201.2 IP, 3.12 ERA, 3.48 DRA, 167:29 K:BB ratio, 21-4 record, 4.5 WAR

Price: 211.2 IP, 3.91 ERA, 2.72 DRA, 217:44 K:BB ratio, 16-8 record, 6.7 WAR

Right so… Price has been better. It’s close, but he’s been better. It’s not surprising that we’ve missed it, given Porcello’s wonderful season-long redemption story and the early hole from which Price had to extract himself, but we’ve certainly missed it. So again, the question is: How?

For a team perpetually short on starting pitchers, Price’s health has been a skill, just as it has been for his entire career.

The answer is that we take volume for granted, and one steadily accumulates WAR by going out there every so-and-so number of days and doing the damn thing. Price has done exactly this. For a team perpetually short on starting pitchers, his health has been a skill, just as it has been for his entire career. The same is true of Pork Chop, but he doesn’t lead the league in innings pitched — Price does, even after Porcello added nine innings to his total last night. This may not make Price a great Cy Young Award candidate, even if it makes him more like the actual, workhorse, Cy Young.

Let’s expand our look from Price versus Porcello to both of them versus the rest of the field. I’m excluding Zack Britton because, frankly, he’s not relevant and anyone telling you differently is trying to sell you something. I’m also excluding Jose Quintana, because his numbers don’t stack up, no matter how underrated everyone thinks he is. Finally, I’m excluding J.A. Happ because I want to and I don’t think anyone will really care. Here’s my list:

Porcello: 201.2 IP, 3.12 ERA, 3.48 DRA, 167:29 K:BB ratio, 21-4 record, 4.5 WAR

Price: 211.2 IP, 3.91 ERA, 2.72 DRA, 217:44 K:BB ratio, 16-8 record, 6.7 WAR

Sale: 210.2 IP, 3.03 ERA, 2.65 DRA, 215:44 K:BB ratio, 16-8 record, 6.8 WAR

Hamels: 186 IP, 3.42 ERA, 2.74 DRA, 187:75 K:BB ratio, 14-5 record, 5.8 WAR

Kluber: 204.2 IP, 3.12 ERA, 2.97 DRA, 215:54 K:BB ratio, 17-9 record, 5.9 WAR

Quickly, let’s look at the three non-Sox candidates to see how Price stacks up.

In the case of Sale, outside of ERA, his numbers and Price’s are virtually identical. It’s actually kind of creepy how similar they are? Sale probably makes a better candidate by being a more exciting pitcher at this stage of his career, but he’s also on a crappy team (which, whatever) and placed himself at the center of two patently absurd scandals this year, which is not endearing to me, given how stupid they were. I’d say Sale is a marginally better candidate in a vacuum, but we don’t vote in a vacuum.

In the case of Hamels, his low IP and high walk totals — he leads the league in walks! — are quickly disqualifying in this context. He is a fine pitcher having a fine season, but he hasn’t been the best.

Kluber is still my favorite to win the award, as he has pretty much everything going for him, or did until last night’s Porcello start. There is a real argument that Price has been as good as Kluber or better — more innings, more strikeouts, fewer walks — but it’s hard enough to isolate even in this context, where I’ve taken pains to spell it out, and will likely be invisible to voters. This is fine: Kluber is great and is the clear-cut best pitcher on a first-place team, unlike both Porcello and Price, who must contend with one another, and unlike Hamels, who hasn’t put in the innings to qualify in this columnist’s opinion, has walked too many people, and won’t win anyway.

All of this is academic, of course. Price won’t really be considered because of biases both old and new, and logic both sound and flawed. He knew that his contract came with sky-high expectations, and it’s his “failure” to meet certain high standards seems to have disqualified him early on from anything better than a fifth-place finish or so. That’s too bad, because he’s had the strongest season of all Sox pitchers, and maybe the strongest in the American League. Believe it. 

Photo by Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports Images

It seems likely, though, that the Red Sox will look to acquire a pitcher who can start for them on opening day. That may be through free agency, but given ownership’s reticence to pass out $150 million to Jon Lester last off-season, it’s difficult, even with a new front office in place, to see them reversing course and offering David Price $200 million.

They might do it anyway, but the more likely option is through a trade. There are three primary reasons for that. The first is age. The Red Sox can get a younger starter in trade than they can acquire on the free-agent market. The second is salary. The Red Sox will have to pay Price $30 million a year or some such figure while Sonny Gray, to pull a name from a hat, will make the league minimum. The third is the Red Sox minor league system, which is chock full of talent, so it makes sense to use some of that talent to upgrade the major league roster more quickly and efficiently (i.e. pack more talent into one roster spot) than the system could do on its own.

Who might the team look to acquire? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it. That will depend on who teams make available, but the Red Sox have quite the minor league system. If they’re willing to make most if not all of those players available, many options will be on the table. Here are six of the most intriguing pitchers the Red Sox could acquire through a trade this off-season to head their rotation:

Corey Kluber

Kluber is the reigning AL Cy Young winner and though he won’t repeat this season, he’s still had a fantastic year despite a mostly luck-dependent bad start. Kluber has been worth just over five wins this season by DRA-based WARP, which puts him behind Zack Greinke, Clayton Kershaw, Dallas Keuchel and Sonny Gray, and ahead of every other pitcher in baseball. He’s fantastic. So why would the Indians look to trade a cost-controlled (he has four years and $35.5 million left on his extension after this season) 29-year-old ace pitcher? Two reasons they might: their farm system is lousy and their major league roster is lousy, too.

It’s unclear what Cleveland’s plan is, but it seems unlikely they’ll be expected to contend in a packed AL Central in 2016 or even 2017. That doesn’t necessitate dealing Kluber, of course. He’s signed through 2021 if all his options are exercised, but doing so could speed up the rebuilding process considerably. Dealing Kluber would ignite a bidding war that could help build the next great Indians team, a bidding war the Red Sox could potentially win with the strength and depth of their farm system. This isn’t the most likely outcome, but then no one guy is likely. Kluber would be a great addition (obviously) and his salary would allow the Red Sox to supplement the rotation though free agency as well if they so desired.

Carlos Carrasco

This is the other possibility from Cleveland. Rumor has it the Indians already shopped Carrasco at the trade deadline, but he’s now on the DL with a shoulder issue, which makes a deal difficult until he can get back on the mound again. Still, Carrasco is quite good when he’s healthy. After struggling for years after joining the Indians from Philadelphia in the Cliff Lee trade, the light finally came on for Carrasco last season. His strikeouts jumped from below average to well above and he cut his walks allowed in half. Then he proved he’s not a flash in the pan by repeating it this season. Like Kluber, Carrasco is on an inexpensive (relatively) contract that will pay him $14.5 million over the next two seasons with $9 million and $9.5 million option years in 2019 and 2020, respectively. On a per-inning basis Carrasco is similar to Kluber. The difference is Carrasco has thrown 292 innings over the last two seasons and is now on the DL while Kluber has thrown 430 and is still healthy and going.

Jacob deGrom/Matt Harvey

This would make a whole lot more sense if the Mets weren’t about to win the NL East, which apparently they are. Even so, the Mets have as much young pitching as any team does but don’t have much in the way of the young hitting. A deal for one of these pitchers would likely require someone currently able to play at the major league level, so while you might consider Rafael Devers, etc, etc, etc, for Kluber, a deal for deGrom or Harvey would start with a guy like Mookie Betts or Xander Bogaerts (I refuse to get into specific packages here or who would have to throw in extra players). deGrom is already 27 and hasn’t been as good as Carrasco or Kluber, while Harvey is a year younger and has managed to almost replicate his incredible six win 2014 season this year with one exception: home runs have been more of an issue. Also, Harvey is coming off of Tommy John surgery.

Sonny Gray

The constant struggle the Oakland A’s face is how to keep the team competitive while constantly rebuilding all on a slim payroll. Thus, good players put in their time building their trade value in Oakland and then are dealt for, Josh Donaldson aside, younger cheaper, players. Although not the strikeout threat that any of the above starters presents, Sonny Gray is younger (he’ll be 26 next year) and is as fantastic. He’s a ground ball guy so he could presumably get by in Fenway just fine without striking out the larger number of hitters that the above pitchers do.

As to why the A’s would deal Gray even though he’s still silly cheap and is one of the better pitchers in baseball? Well, they dealt Josh Donaldson! But seriously, they may not. I’m guessing it would depend on the nature of the package coming back and the state of the A’s going forward. Oakland would likely want a combination of major league talent and minor league talent in return. Who knows if he’ll move, but given the A’s struggles this season it wouldn’t be a surprise to hear his name batted around at the GM meetings.

Stephen Strasburg

There are others besides the guys listed above. Chris Sale and Tyson Ross for example, but no pitcher in baseball combines the raw stuff with results while retaining upside like Stephen Strasburg. What’s more, if the Nationals continue their crash and burn season, even though Strasburg has turned things around, the Nationals might look to make some deals and shake up the clubhouse.

What’s more more, Strasburg is about to get expensive. He’s making $7.4 million in his second year of arbitration this season and will be a free agent after next season. He’s a Scott Boras client so an extension, especially this close to free agency, is unlikely. As such, he’d be a one-year addition for Boston which would limit their risk and and limit the cost. It’s still Strasburg so the cost would likely be high, but less than any of the above guys due to the number of seasons of player control remaining.

Should be a fun off-season, huh?

Photo by Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports Images