The awards week in MLB will continue on Wednesday night, as MLB Network will serve as the platform to announce the winners of the Cy Young Awards starting at 7:00 pm ET. The Cleveland Guardians have a pitcher among the finalists, and it’s the same one who finished among the last three for the AL Rookie of the Year Award: left-hander Parker Messick.
Messick will be competing with New York Yankees ace Cam Schlittler and Toronto Blue Jays right-hander Dylan Cease. Schlittler is the overwhelming favorite, but could a surprise still happen?
Tim Stebbins of MLB.com certainly makes a compelling case for Messick, who dominated as a rookie on his way to a historic season that landed him second in the AL Rookie of the Year race.
“It’s hard to perform in the Major Leagues as a rookie, let alone excel as one. Messick’s candidacy rests on his consistency and reliability. He recorded a 2.56 ERA (sixth among qualified MLB starters), along with 193 strikeouts in 186 1/3 innings (seventh). His 6.3 WAR (per Baseball Reference) ranked second to Schlittler (7.0) among AL pitchers, above Cease (5.6). Messick consistently gave the Guardians a chance to win this past season. He was ace-like,” Stebbins wrote.
Stebbins is right when he says that Messick’s case is built on consistency. He was a quality start machine and often held the opposition to two runs or fewer. That’s awfully hard to achieve at the highest level, start after start.
Messick pitched most of the 2026 campaign as a 25-year-old rookie, but he showed maturity beyond his years. Did he do more than Schlittler to be the favorite for the AL Cy Young? Probably not. The Yankees righty was a tier above everyone else this year. However, there’s a case to be made that the Guardians’ budding ace deserves to be second.
Cease bested him in fWAR, but Messick had the edge in rWAR. The former is FanGraphs’ edition of the stat, and the latter is Baseball Reference’s. Both are perfectly valid.
Regardless of the outcome of the vote, the Guardians are ecstatic about Messick’s evolution in 2026. He blossomed into a legitimate ace, and that’s even better than individual hardware.
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