Padres closer Mason Miller has utterly disgusting numbers right now. Have you seen them?
Sure, the surface-level stuff jumps out, what with the 0.00 ERA and 0.35 WHIP with an MLB-best eight saves in eight tries. That’s all amazing. How about just looking at the individual results of each hitter he’s faced? It won’t take long. He’s faced 38 batters. He’s allowed four baserunners (two singles and two walks). He has 27 strikeouts. Again, that’s against 38 batters. That’s a strikeout against 71.1% of the batters he’s faced.
Entering Monday, only 25 starting pitchers had more than Miller’s 27 strikeouts. He’s thrown 11 ⅓ innings.
It’s so early it’s almost ridiculous to even talk about it, but there are odds out for the NL Cy Young and only four players have shorter odds than Miller. Via DraftKings:
2026 NL Cy Young odds
As of April 20
- Paul Skenes, Pirates: +260
- Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Dodgers: +380
- Cristopher Sánchez, Phillies: +550
- Chris Sale, Braves: +950
- Mason Miller, Padres: +1500
This means we can talk about if he could win the Cy Young, right? His odds are shorter than Shohei Ohtani, Jacob Misiorowski and Sandy Alcantara. Let’s talk about it.
Relievers have won Cy Young awards before. On the NL side, we’ve seen Mike Marshall, Bruce Sutter, Steve Bedrosian, Mark Davis and Eric Gagne take the honors while in the AL, the relievers to win the Cy Young have been Sparky Lyle, Rollie Fingers, Willie Hernandez and Dennis Eckersley.
In this day and age, however, it’s pretty difficult. Aroldis Chapman was unbelievable last season (1.17 ERA, 0.70 WHIP, 85 K, 61 ⅓ IP, 3.6 WAR) and finished seventh. In 2024, Emmanuel Clase had an off-the-charts good season (0.61 ERA, 0.66 WHIP, 66 K, 74 ⅓ IP, 4.4 WAR) and only managed to finish third. Prior to those that, we hadn’t seen a reliever finish higher than sixth since 2016. No reliever has won it since 2003.
Part of the problem for relievers in Cy Young voting now is that we’ve all accepted how much more value starters accrue over the course of the season due to workload. Even the most dominant reliever will have 70-75 innings of that, while ace starters will work in the ballpark of 200 innings.
At least for me as a voter, and I don’t think I’m alone here, if any reliever were to merit a first-place Cy Young vote, I’d need to see a lead in the rate stats that is exponentially overwhelming in order to justify voting for 70ish innings over 200ish innings.
If anyone can do it, Mason Miller might just be the guy.
How Mason Miller could make a real Cy Young run
I think we could start with Clase’s ERA and WHIP and say something like 0.60 ERA and 0.70 WHIP could work, but we have to go into the strikeout overload. Fortunately, Miller has already built that foundation. He won’t strike out 71.1% of the hitters he faces all year, but there’s a good start here.
Let’s try this line: 70 IP, 0.60 ERA, 0.70 WHIP, 50 saves in 52 chances, 124 K, 12 BB, 5.6 WAR
I went extreme just to see if we could get there. In case it needs to be mentioned, no, I don’t think Miller is going to be this great this season.
For the purposes of this exercise, let’s say Miller does post that line. And let’s say the best starting pitcher the NL ends up with is someone like 2021 Corbin Burnes, who won the Cy Young. Burnes was 11-5 with a 2.43 ERA, 0.94 WHIP and 234 strikeouts against 34 walks in 167 innings, good for 5.3 WAR.
I really think Miller would have a legitimate chance.
If you believe this is possible, maybe those +1500 odds look juicy enough to you.
I don’t think Miller can pull it off, but it’ll sure he fun to watch. He’s absurd.
