MLB Cy Young 2026: Longshot Picks to Bet on This Season

Let’s continue our look at season-long MLB picks. Call us this awards week!

Today is the Cy Young Markets tour. Last year’s winners were AL’s Tarik Skubal and NL’s Paul Skenes, who return as favorites to win in 2026. Who can argue? Garrett Crochet in the AL is probably just as good as Skubal, and it’s probably because he’s close to coming into the season at +425 to +350 for Skubal. In the NL, Skenes is +220 and Yoshi Yamamoto is +550.

Now, I don’t want to write a recommendation for the top three. Because that’s where the fun lies. Or really profit; They’re all one hour away from being eliminated from the race and every pitcher is always one pitch away from that scary forearm tightness or something. Now let’s look at a longer shot. All of today’s odds are from DraftKings and we’ll be taking half increments on each bet.

American League Cy Young Award Recommendation

Cole Reagans +1300

The Royals left-hander has an arsenal and a track record of success compared to the aces above, but he doesn’t have the same level of durability. In fact, 2024 was the only season out of four MLB seasons in which he stayed on the mound for an entire year.

And he posted a 3.14 ERA and 1.14 WHIP. Ragans pitched 62.1 IP last year but posted an ERA of 4.67. He posted a whopping 38.1% K%, 2.67 xERA, and 2.52 SIERA. He’s been an ace in limited duties, so obviously he’ll need to have a healthy season for this pick to pay off.

Dylan Stop +3500

The suspension is the exact opposite of the Ragans in that it never misses a turn. to the letter.

He has made at least 32 starts over the past five seasons, including 12 during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season. He has been quite consistent each year, with an ERA of 2.20 in 2022, a WHIP of 1.07 in 2024, and a career K% of 28.6%, recording stuff close to an ace. His problem lies with his command as his BB% is in the low 10s and his batted balls are out of whack. Cease posted a SIERA between 3.48 and 3.58 in four of his five full seasons (4.10 the other seasons) and had a K total between 214 and 227. But strangely enough, his actual ERA fluctuated between 2.20 and 4.58. He moves to Toronto ahead of a stellar defense, so everything might fall into place for him!

NL Cy Young Award Recommendation

Logan Webb +2000

Webb has similar durability to Cease, but is more consistent in actual performance but somewhat less in reach methods.

That’s somewhat odd, given that he’s a career 2.8 ground ball pitcher for LA. This means avoiding long balls and relying heavily on batting luck and fielding, which can vary from year to year. However, Webb’s ERA only ranged from 2.90 to 3.47. Part of it is that he seems able to adjust his approach to games and team situations. In 2024, he had a K% of just 20.5%, but in 2025, he had a career-high 26.2% K%. In 2025, he’ll find he needs to boost his K% a bit more and steer all of his grounders to the left side, where Matt Chapman and Willie Adames are. But we’re going to take a longer shot here, so we’ll give Webb a chance to find out.

Nolan McLean +3500

The future Mets ace pitched 48 innings in the MLB last year but still has rookie eligibility. And those 48 innings were really great, with a 2.06 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, and 30.3% K%. Obviously posting those numbers over an entire season would be a stretch, but he’s a guy with this kind of upside, so who knows.

He’s an insanely elite athlete who played QB at Oklahoma State and was a two-way player as recently as two years ago.