Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani is having a fantastic season on the mound, but he has a mountain to climb if he’s to win his first Cy Young award.
The National League is stacked with pitching talent, with pitchers like Cristopher Sánchez and Jacob Misiorowski making themselves Cy Young favorites early in the season. Ohtani still has a shot, though, and MLB.com’s Manny Randhawa outlined what it would take for him to win his first Cy Young.
The three things Randhawa says Ohtani needs to win the award are an ERA below 2.00, a 30% strikeout rate and more than 170 innings pitched.
Is Ohtani on Track to Reach Those Marks This Season?
Ohtani is a unique case compared to the other pitchers in the running, obviously because he’s a two way player, but also due to the Dodgers’ six-man rotation. The innings pitched benchmark is likely to be the most difficult of those three criteria for Ohtani to reach this season.
The right-hander has pitched 55 innings through nine starts this season, averaging about six innings per start. At this rate, Ohtani will have to start 29 games to cross 170 innings, but is only on pace to make about 24 starts for his team. If he only goes on to start that many games, he’ll have to find a way to be more efficient to go deeper in his starts.
The other two are a little less difficult, as they’re averaged out regardless of sample size, but they’re no easy task either.
Ohtani has a 0.82 ERA at the moment, well below the 2.00 Randhawa expects him to need, but his underlying numbers show he’s due for a minor regression. He has a 2.40 xERA and a 2.49 FIP heading into his 10th start of the season on Wednesday, meaning he has been over performing based on how he has pitched so far.
The reigning MVP has clearly been upset with his performances as of late, though, so if he begins firing how he wants to, that could change quickly.
As for his strikeout rate, Ohtani currently fans batters at a 28.6% clip—slightly lower than his 31.1% career average. Unlike the other two criteria, Ohtani has accomplished this in a full season before, and will look to do so again in 2026.
Ohtani’s next step towards his first ever Cy Young award comes on Wednesday against the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he will start in the third game of a four-game series. That game will begin at 6:40 p.m. PT.
What do you think of Ohtani’s chances to reach those milestones?
3 Responses
If anyone can do it, Shohei can!
reckon he’s got a good chance of making it to a Cy Young. maybe this year, maybe another. but he’s an amazing pitcher!
Shohei has several things going against him, first off he’s a Dodger, and for some reason Dodgers don’t get Cy Young votes anymore. Next is it’s become very strikeout biased. Almost like wins and losses don’t count any more, just strikeouts. Next is not enough innings. This one might be legit, except there might only be half a dozen that will qualify for the ERA title.