Question of the week: Will Horton win the NL RotY?

[Brock Beauchamp]

ESPN has him second on the odds list. Will he win?

[Outshined_One]

He'll finish Top 3, but as established elsewhere on this site, the Brewers are our rightful NL overlords and their runaway freight train of success will ensure future MVP Isaac Collins or future NL Cy Young winner Chad Patrick wins it.

Drake Baldwin also has been pretty good, too, I guess.

[Jason Ross]

A few weeks ago I would have told you no way. Today, I think he's got the inside track as of today because he has this historic run of run prevention on his side. When you have "first since" or something historic attached to your name, it really sways voters. He can't keep up a sub 1.5 ERA much longer - it's nearly impossible, but he's also been so good (18th in the league in shadows RV, for example) that he can probably be just "good" and have a good shot.

[muntjack]

Yeah. If, at the end of the year,  there's any way you can squint and say "best 2nd half of all- time",  then he has to win.  Right now you could do that.  Crazy. 

[imb]

No. He's wildly outperforming his underlying metrics and he's only been the third or fourth best rookie pitcher in baseball this year. But he'll be third or second. 

[Derwood]

The Jake Arrieta 2.0 run has to move the needle a bit

[chopsx9]

3 hours ago, imb said:

No. He's wildly outperforming his underlying metrics and he's only been the third or fourth best rookie pitcher in baseball this year. But he'll be third or second. 

Who are the other 3?

[imb]

1 hour ago, chopsx9 said:

Who are the other 3?

patrick has been better. warren has done the same as horton essentially but over 40 more innings. Personally i feel like Leiter has been worse than Horton, but he has .4 more fWAR in 25 more innings so at the very least it's a conversation. 

You'd think the narrative of Horton's insane second half would buy him some votes but I haven't seen anyone nationally giving a horsefeathers really so I'm not really sure it's penetrated voter brain, and by the time it does, if ever, he's probably gonna have one or two blowups that negate it in their minds anyway. 

[Rcal10]

58 minutes ago, imb said:

patrick has been better. warren has done the same as horton essentially but over 40 more innings. Personally i feel like Leiter has been worse than Horton, but he has .4 more fWAR in 25 more innings so at the very least it's a conversation. 

You'd think the narrative of Horton's insane second half would buy him some votes but I haven't seen anyone nationally giving a horsefeathers really so I'm not really sure it's penetrated voter brain, and by the time it does, if ever, he's probably gonna have one or two blowups that negate it in their minds anyway. 

How have Warren and Patrick been better than Horton? Horton’s era is about 1.5 lower than Warren and .75 lower than Patrick. I get that some don’t believe Horton’s results, but his results are what they are. Way better than either of those guys. The ROY award is going to go to someone with actual results. Not someone who should be better, but his numbers do not reflect it. Horton has also gotten better as the year has gone on. Yes, early his K rate was bad. But he has gotten much better there. He is the better pitcher now and will be a better pitcher than either of those guys going forward. 

[mk49]

I don't know if he will or not.  If Shota's first year was this year, he would have won ROY.   The Yankees pitcher won ROY last year, and Shota was way better than him.

The biggest thing about Cade is IP.  Skenes pitched 130+ innings last year, and Cade won't.  Cade has been one of the best SPs in MLB in the last two months, though.  And, I'll be really happy if he wins.

[Rcal10]

12 hours ago, mk49 said:

I don't know if he will or not.  If Shota's first year was this year, he would have won ROY.   The Yankees pitcher won ROY last year, and Shota was way better than him.

The biggest thing about Cade is IP.  Skenes pitched 130+ innings last year, and Cade won't.  Cade has been one of the best SPs in MLB in the last two months, though.  And, I'll be really happy if he wins.

Cade will be over 120 innings if he makes all his starts, maybe even getting to 130. That is enough. He may not win it, but I don’t think only having 22-25 starts is going to hinder his chances. Now if the Cubs take him out of the rotation now, maybe he doesn’t win. 

[Tryptamine]

Yeah, peripherals don't really matter for ROY or MVP. There's never going to be an mvp race where the voters pick the guy with lesser numbers because the guy with better numbers was carrying a really lucky babip. Also, Horton's FIP is down to 3.69 which is pretty impressive considering at the all-star break it was 4.45.

[Clem Fandango]

I think another question to ask is how much bWAR plays into voters consideration vs fWAR, because according to bWAR Matt Shaw is atop the leaderboard. I do not think he has a chance to win because his overall numbers look so bad due to his first half, but if Hortons 2nd half qualifies him for RotY consideration, why would Shaws .923 ops and best in class bWAR not?

[mul21]

Cade Horton is -115 to win ROTY on ESPNBet so he's currently the odds on favorite according to them.

[CubinNY]

Trying to think outside of the box, here. With Plancia on the question mark list, why not move Horton to closer? 

[Tryptamine]

Unless he falls on his face in his final 2 to 3 starts I just don't see how Horton doesn't win NL ROY. He's now sitting at a 2.70 ERA in 110IP and pending a major Cub collapse he'll be 10W-4L. 

[Tryptamine]

Another strong start. His season ERA is down to 2.66, his record is sitting at 11-4 and even his peripherals are starter to look strong. His FIP is now to down 3.53.

Edited September 17, 2025 by Tryptamine

[Derwood]

[Derwood]

[muntjack]

Not in any way diminishing what Horton is doing, but Jake's run was something else entirely.  He was so dominant that I started thinking he had solved pitching.  Every start felt like a guaranteed win.  

Cade has been fantastic,  but he's given up a good amount of hard contact and been fairly lucky on balls in play, to say nothing of his measured workload. 

 

[soccer10k]

Jake also pitched nearly 2 more innings per start in that span. He went 77 1/3 in those 11 starts. Cade is only at 58 1/3 in his 11 starts.

Also, after those 11 starts, Jake started four more games in the regular season, where he pitched 30 innings, gave up 12 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, and had 32 K for a 0.30 ERA and 1.30 FIP.

Like you said, not trying to take away from Cade's stellar run, but Jake was on another level for those 2 1/2 months.

[WhyCantWeWin]

Beating Skenes definitely boosted his national profile

[Derwood]

[Rcal10]

9 minutes ago, Derwood said:

Huge difference in this one. My guess is Gibson throw 99 innings in that 11 game span. Fun to compare Horton to Arrieta and Gibson accomplishments, but he isn’t anywhere near those levels of domination. Don’t get me wrong, love the guy and he has been amazing. Very excited for his future. But what we are seeing now is not at Arrieta level and certainly not at Gibson. 
On the flip side, Gibson did that when the mound was higher and scores were a lot lower. 

Edited September 17, 2025 by Rcal10

[Derwood]

Number of IP =/= level of dominance.