Verlander and Halladay lead close calls for Cy Young awards

After taking last week off due to the All-Star break, Awards Watch returns with a look at the Cy Young chase, the toughest race to call of the three major player awards. There are strong arguments to be made for either of the top two American League contenders and any of the top three National League challengers. In fact, these rankings are far from immutable, and seem likely to change with each subsequent start by the pitchers in question.

NOTE: All stats through Sunday, July 17; League leaders in bold, major league leaders in bold and italics. The number in parenthesis after each player's name reflects his rank on the previous list.

American League

1. Justin Verlander, RHP, Tigers (2)

Season Stats: 12-5, 2.29 ERA, 0.90 WHIP, 8.8 K/9, 4.64 K/BB, 4 CG, 2 SHO

Last Five Starts: 3-2, 1.49 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 10.7 K/9, 6.14 K/BB

Verlander's dud against the White Sox on Friday was just his second non-quality start of the season. In the space between his previous non-quality start, against the Rays in late May, and that one, Verlander went 8-1 with a 0.75 ERA in nine starts, the one loss coming in a 1-0 game against the Angels in which Dan Haren threw a shutout. During that stretch, Verlander threw as few as seven innings just once and allowed as many as two runs just once. No other pitcher this season, in either league, has gone more than six consecutive starts with at least seven innings pitched and no more than two runs allowed in each. Verlander is the only one of the 10 pitchers listed in this week's Awards Watch not to lead his league in one of the categories listed above, but he does lead the majors in innings and quality starts.

2. Jered Weaver, RHP, Angels (1)

Season Stats: 12-4, 1.90 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, 7.5 K/9, 3.73 K/BB, 4 CG, 2 SHO

Last Five Starts: 4-0, 1.43 ERA, 0.96 WHIP, 6.5 K/9, 3.86 K/BB, 1 CG

Weaver went 6-1 with a 1.39 ERA in his first seven starts. He then turned in two consecutive starts in which he allowed four runs in six innings, taking the loss in both. Those remain his only non-quality starts of the season, and in 11 turns since then, he has gone 6-1 with a 1.62 ERA. Since his last loss, on May 18, he has gone 6-0 with a 1.40 ERA in 10 starts. Weaver doesn't have Verlander's no-hitter, and his best nine-start run doesn't quite measure up to Verlander's recent stretch of dominance (Weaver went 5-0 with a 1.27 ERA, lasting at least seven innings each time out and only once allowing three runs over a nine-start stretch from May 23 to July 7), but a very strong argument could be made that despite Verlander's recent surge, Weaver should still be the favorite for this award.

3. CC Sabathia, LHP, Yankees (N/A)

Season Stats: 14-4, 2.64 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 7.8 K/9, 3.53 K/BB, 2 CG, 1 SHO

Last Five Starts: 5-0, 0.45 ERA, 0.86 WHIP, 11.3 K/9, 5.55 K/BB, 1 SHO

Sabathia's performance over the last five starts, detailed above, is why he's on this list. Not that he wasn't having a fine season before that run, but over those last five starts he has been close to untouchable. Sabathia has struck out eight or more men in each outing and tied a career high by striking out 13 Brewers on June 30. Even more impressive, he has allowed just two runs in that time and had a 23 2/3-inning scoreless streak in the middle three games against the Brewers, Indians and Rays. Over his career, Sabathia has been a better second-half pitcher, dropping his ERA by more than a third of a run relative to his first-half performance, and August and September have been his best months. Mix in the fact that Sabathia has finished in the top five in his league's Cy Young voting in each of the last four seasons, winning once, and he seems unlikely to fall off this list any time soon.

4. James Shields, RHP, Rays (3)

Season Stats: 8-8, 2.60 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, 8.8 K/9, 3.92 K/BB, 7 CG, 3 SHO

Last Five Starts: 1-4, 3.25 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, 9.3 K/9, 3.70 K/BB, 2 CG

Shields has lost his last four starts, but only pitched poorly in one of them, his last, and even in that game he struck out eight Red Sox in six innings. The start before that, Shields throw a complete game against the Yankees and didn't allow an earned run but still took the loss because Sabathia threw a shutout and the Yankees won 1-0 on a run that scored with the help of two throwing errors (one of which, admittedly, was Shields'). Prior to his current losing streak, Shields threw three consecutive complete games, all wins, allowing a total of just two runs, one earned, in those three contests.

To put Shields' seven complete games in context, Roy Halladay has led the majors in that category four times, including the last two years, and the AL two other times but has never had more than nine complete games in a season. The last pitcher to have double-digit complete games was Sabathia in 2008, when threw seven down the stretch for the Brewers after recording three in the first half for the Indians. The last league leader with double-digit complete games was Randy Johnson, who had 12 for the Diamondbacks in 1999. The last American Leaguer with double-digits was Scott Erickson, who had 11 for the Orioles in 1998.

5. Dan Haren, RHP, Angels (N/A)

Season Stats: 10-6, 2.75 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 7.5 K/9, 5.85 K/BB, 2 CG, 2 SHO

Last Five Starts: 4-1, 2.17 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, 6.8 K/9, 7.00 K/BB, 1 SHO

Haren's 4-1 record over his last five starts isn't an indication that the Angels are scoring any more runs for him. He has still received just 3.12 runs of support per 27 outs on the season. In fact, two of those last four wins were 1-0 games, both tense pitchers' duels. In the first, the Angels scored only an unearned run against the Nationals' Jordan Zimmermann, and in his next start, Haren finished the job himself, shutting out the Tigers for a 1-0 win over Verlander, who lasted 7 1/3 frames. The Angels have scored just one run for Haren eight times this season and those two games were the first of those eight that he or the team won.

Off the list: Josh Beckett, Michael Pineda