Who has a better chance of winning the 2024 Cy Young, Max Fried or Spencer Strider?

The Atlanta Braves are in a good place for 2024 - as we prepare to enter the new year, the Braves have two different pitchers that could reasonably claim the title of "ace" in their rotation in both Spencer Strider and Max Fried.

MLB.com writer Mark Bowman, writing a "looking ahead" column, gave a prediction for the new year that Max Fried would win the 2024 Cy Young.

And Fried, in his last full season, came close, finishing as the runner-up for the 2022 award to Miami's Sandy Alcántara. Fried went 14-7 with a 2.48 ERA in his 30 starts, striking out 170 and walking only 32. It was Fried's second career top five finish, after coming in 5th place in the abbreviated 2020 season thanks to a 7-0 record and 2.25 ERA in 11 starts.

Meanwhile, most popular betting sites (like FanDuel) have Spencer Strider installed as the National League favorite for the 2024 Cy Young. Leading MLB in several significant categories like strikeouts (281), wins (20) and winning percentage (.800), Strider was the 4th place finisher thanks to an unsightly 3.86 ERA that would have been the highest ERA for any Cy-Young winner dating back to the award's inception.

Let's look at each player and what has to happen for them to win the award in 2024:

The case for Max Fried winning the 2024 Cy Young

For Max Fried, it comes down to two things for his Cy Young case: luck and health.

The lefty made only 14 starts in the regular season in 2023, owing to hamstring and forearm strains that sidelined him for most of the season. When he was on the mound, making 14 regular season starts, he was his usual dominant self: 8-1 record, 2.55 ERA, and 80 strikeouts to 18 walks.

In both of Fried's Top 5 finish years, he didn't finish as the league leader in any of the attention-grabbing categories to voters - strikeouts, innings, or wins. Instead, Fried was just consistently around the top pitchers in baseball in most of those categories.

One commonality for both of his finishes, and something that (anecdotally) seems to always work out in favor of the eventual winner, is an ERA number better than a FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) number. Fried outperformed his FIP in both years he made the final standings, and he'll need some luck and support from the Braves offense to lead the league in wins or innings.

The case for Spencer Strider winning the 2024 Cy Young

We specifically didn't mention Max Fried leading the league in strikeouts in 2024 because the odds-on favorite to do that is Spencer Strider.

"Quadzilla" led baseball in both total strikeouts (281) and strikeouts rate (13.5 K/9) in 2023, setting an Atlanta Braves single-season record in the process by besting John Smoltz's 1996 season total of 276.

And not only was Strider's mark the best in baseball, it wasn't particularly close. Amongst qualified pitchers (1.0 IP/team game), Strider was only two strikeouts per inning better than the next closest starter, San Diego's Blake Snell at 11.7 K/9.

Strider needs to continue that strikeout dominance in 2024 if he wants to win the award, but he also needs some help in the ERA department. He actually led the National League in FIP, at 2.85, but his ERA was a full run higher at 3.86. This is because of Strider's bad luck with the longball - he served up 22 homers in 2023, a rate of 1.1 HR/9. The three players above him in the voting all gave up the same or less homers, but in significantly more innings and so had a much better homer rate.

Pitcher	Homers	Innings	Homer Rate
Blake Snell	15	180.0	0.8
Logan Webb	20	216.0	0.8
Zac Gallen	22	210.0	0.9
Spencer Strider	22	186.2	1.1

Who has the better chance of actually taking home the hardware?

For now, I'm going to say Max Fried. That isn't to take anything away from Spencer Strider - far from it - but Max Fried when healthy has shown the ability to force his way into that conversation multiple times in his career.

For Fried, it's all going to come down to some luck: Can he pitch enough innings and get enough run support to top the leaderboard in either wins or innings pitched? Can he suppress hard contract enough to take the ERA crown?

I feel better about his chances to do that than Spencer Strider's chances of going deep enough into games and suppressing enough home runs to get higher on the leaderboards in the rest of the conventional statistics.

Plus, the dynamic of Max Fried entering his free agency "platform year" can't be ignored. The looming contract that's out there after the season has a way of making players reach a different level of dominance, and Max Fried's a competitor that might see what reigning Cy Young winner Blake Snell gets in free agency this offseason and decides to beat that on the market next season.

What do you think? Let us know on social media which pitcher you think has a better chance of doing it in 2024 and why!

The best breaking ball in all of MLB for 2023 belonged to Charlie Morton

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