Underdog Stories / Sports analysis & explainers

How Is the Cy Young Award Winner Chosen?

How is the Cy Young Award winner chosen? See who votes, how points work, and why ERA, innings and newer stats made two second-year pitchers unanimous picks.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · November 12, 2026

Share on X

Milwaukee’s Jacob Misiorowski and the Yankees’ Cam Schlittler each collected 30 first-place votes in 2026. That leaves 60 ballots with the same name at the top and a fair question: how is the Cy Young Award winner chosen?

Thirty baseball writers in each league rank five pitchers after the regular season. Their choices earn points, with the most going to first place. The highest total wins. In the Yesterday in Sports episode “Cy Young Sweeps, Spurs Rally & Connor McDavid Hits 20,” Chris Horwedel said there “wasn’t much suspense.” The ballots still show what writers agreed on.

How is the Cy Young Award winner chosen?

The Baseball Writers’ Association of America, or BBWAA, runs the vote. Two writers represent each Major League Baseball city in its league. That makes 30 American League voters and 30 National League voters, each choosing a winner for their own league.

Each writer ranks five pitchers. First place earns seven points. The next four spots earn four, three, two and one point. Add every ballot, and the pitcher with the most points takes the award. A unanimous winner gets all 30 first-place votes, worth 210 points.

That happened twice in 2026. Misiorowski won the National League award with 210 points. Schlittler won the American League award with 210, too. Neither needed help from a lower spot on a ballot, since no writer placed him there.

The writers submit their votes before the postseason starts. Schlittler’s memorable outing against Boston in the 2025 playoffs may help explain why fans knew his name going into 2026. It did not add points to his 2026 Cy Young case. The vote concerned the regular season he had just pitched.

There is no single stat that tells voters whom to pick. The ballot asks them to rank pitchers, which means weighing one season against another. A sharp ERA matters. So does how long a pitcher kept producing it.

Who votes for the Cy Young Award?

The voters are selected BBWAA members, rather than managers or fans. Two writers from each MLB city vote on awards for that city’s league. The BBWAA publishes the individual ballots afterward, so readers can see where each writer placed each pitcher.

That last part is useful. A vote total can make a close race look simple, or a simple race look close. The 2026 National League results managed both at once. Every writer picked Misiorowski first, yet second place came down to one point: Philadelphia’s Cristopher Sánchez finished with 99, ahead of Atlanta’s Chris Sale at 98.

Sánchez appeared on all 30 ballots. So did Sale. Seventeen writers placed Sánchez second, while 11 placed Sale there. Sale drew more third-place votes. Once the points were counted, Sánchez had the narrow edge.

Horwedel said the result was not a slight to either runner-up. He was right to separate those races. Voters agreed on the best National League pitcher and still had plenty to sort out behind him. A unanimous winner does not mean everyone filled out the rest of the ballot alike.

The finalists can cause confusion, too. They are the top three finishers in voting, rather than a short list chosen before writers vote. In 2026, seven National League pitchers received at least one Cy Young point.

Which pitching stats matter most to Cy Young voters?

Start with earned run average, or ERA. It shows how many earned runs a pitcher allows per nine innings. Lower is better. Misiorowski’s 1.80 led the majors in 2026, while Schlittler’s 1.95 led the American League.

Then look at what happened between those runs. Misiorowski struck out 252 batters, the most in baseball. His WHIP was 0.80. WHIP adds the walks and hits a pitcher allows, then divides by innings pitched. Put plainly, he let very few hitters reach base.

Opponents hit.157 against Misiorowski. MLB reports that as the lowest average allowed by a qualified pitcher in a full season on record. He also threw a pitch measured at 105.5 mph, a record for a starter under pitch tracking. Those are striking numbers, though a fast pitch alone does not get anyone through September.

Horwedel said, “The velocity gets your attention, but the real difference is that he pairs it with enough command.” The season totals back up his point. Misiorowski worked 174⅔ innings and kept his WHIP low while piling up strikeouts. Hitters had trouble making contact even when he stayed in the rotation for 30 starts.

“The vote wasn’t diminishing their seasons.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Yesterday in Sports

A voter can also look beyond ERA. Fielding independent pitching, or FIP, focuses on strikeouts and the outcomes a pitcher has more direct control over, such as walks and home runs. MLB reports that Misiorowski led the majors with a 2.17 FIP. It offers another way to test what the ERA seems to say.

Nothing has a set share. Writers can read the same line of numbers and, after weighing each part differently, reach different conclusions. In 2026, Misiorowski gave them little reason to argue over first place.

Why do innings pitched matter in Cy Young voting?

A brilliant month can leave a tiny ERA. The full season is harder. Misiorowski made 30 starts and threw 174⅔ innings in 2026, while Schlittler went further, with 193⅔ innings across 33 starts.

That extra work matters when comparing pitchers. Every inning gives a starter another chance to face a dangerous hitter, allow a run or lose command. It also gives his team more outs from someone it trusts. ERA tells you the rate at which earned runs scored. Innings tell you how much pitching went into that rate.

The point came out in a small slip during Horwedel’s account. Describing why the winners stood apart, he said “work ethic,” then corrected himself: “Workload.” They sound close. For a voter reading the season record, they mean different things. Innings and starts can be counted. Effort is much harder to see from a ballot.

Workload can change how a close race feels. Imagine two pitchers with nearly the same ERA, except one threw many more innings. A writer may value the larger body of work. Another may give more weight to the lower ERA or stronger strikeout rate. The voting rules do not settle that choice for them.

Schlittler’s season offered plenty of both. He struck out 239 batters while allowing 49 walks in his 193⅔ innings. His road ERA was 1.16 over 17 away starts. MLB says only Bob Gibson in 1968 and Greg Maddux in 1995 posted lower road ERAs in the live-ball era with at least 100 road innings. That is a lot of good pitching away from home.

What do WAR and other advanced stats tell voters?

Wins above replacement, or WAR, estimates a player’s value compared with an available replacement. It tries to put a season’s work into one number. Schlittler led American League pitchers with 6.2 WAR by FanGraphs’ method in 2026.

That number needs a label. MLB lists Schlittler at 7.0 WAR by Baseball-Reference’s method for the same season. The two systems calculate pitcher value differently, so their totals do not match. Saying “6.2 WAR” without naming FanGraphs hides a choice about how the number was made.

The difference is no reason to throw either figure away. Both methods account for how much a pitcher worked. They also adjust for the setting in which he pitched. A voter can use WAR to check the impression left by ERA, then look back at the innings and the games themselves.

Schlittler’s 1.95 ERA is easy to grasp. So are his 239 strikeouts. His FanGraphs WAR offers a broader view of the same season, while his road numbers show a particular strength within it. No award rule says one of those measures must win an argument.

The freedom matters. In 2026, all 30 American League writers made the same first-place choice, even though they did not have to weigh the candidates the same way to get there.

What does a unanimous Cy Young vote mean?

A unanimous vote means every writer in that league ranked the same pitcher first. It does not mean the winner received every available point, since writers must rank four other pitchers. Misiorowski and Schlittler each earned the maximum possible first-place total of 210.

In the American League, Toronto’s Dylan Cease came second with 110 points. In the National League, Sánchez’s 99 points put him one ahead of Sale. The distance from each winner to his runner-up was large, even as the writers disagreed about other places.

The double sweep was rare. Before 2026, both leagues had produced unanimous Cy Young winners in the same year only twice: in 1968 and 2022. Misiorowski and Schlittler added another odd detail. Both won in their second major-league seasons.

They took different-sized routes to those matching ballots. Misiorowski led baseball with 252 strikeouts in 174⅔ innings. Schlittler threw 19 more innings and led his league with a 1.95 ERA. Each gave voters a full season to judge, followed by the simplest possible first-place count: 30 of 30.

The full episode of Yesterday in Sports is on Underdog Podcasts, with the rest of the network's shows.