The BBWAA presents the 2021 Cy Young Awards to the best pitchers in the American and National Leagues Wednesday evening. Gerrit Cole of the Yankees, Lance Lynn of the White Sox, and Robbie Ray of the Blue Jays top the AL candidates. In the NL, Corbin Burnes of the Brewers, Max Scherzer of the Nationals and Dodgers, and Zack Wheeler of the Phillies make up the final three.

In choosing pitching award winners, I tend to like the Baseball Reference WAR instead of FanGraphs WAR. Ray leads all AL pitchers with 6.7 rWAR, but ranks seventh in fWAR with a 3.9 mark. There seems to be a difference in philosophy here, where FanGraphs is ranking him on a theoretical basis, while Baseball Reference ranks on what he actually accomplished. Ray posted a 2.84 ERA, but his FIP and xFIP came in at 3.69 and 3.36 respectively. FanGraphs rates Nathan Eovaldi first as he posted a 3.75 ERA, but a 2.79 FIP and a 3.48 xFIP. Maybe Ray was lucky and Eovaldi unlucky. Maybe Rays defense saved him a lot of runs and Eovaldi’s didn’t. If fact, Ray pitched much better with runners in scoring position than Eovaldi.

If performance is close, fWAR is a good tie breaker for pitchers, but I like the rWAR rating a lot more for awards. The writers appear to agree, as their top three is the Baseball Reference top three. Lance Lynn does not make the top 15 of FanGraphs. I suspect it will come down to Ray or Cole. Ray owns the better ERA, Cole the better three-true outcomes. Cole ranks high in both systems, and I would likely have voted for Cole.

In the NL, Wheeler tops the rWAR list with a 7.6 number, while Burnes leads fWAR at 7.5. I find those numbers a bit high. Wheeler managed over 200 innings, but Burnes pitched just 167 innings. I find it hard to believe one can post MVP like WARs with so little work. No pitchers finished in the top three in the MVP voters, so once again the writers agree on that.

I would go with Burnes here, as his home run rate of 0.38 per 9 IP is simply amazing in this environment. We’ll find out tonight.