Can Mason Miller win the Cy Young? Padres' closer vying for rare MLB history

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Can Mason Miller win the Cy Young? Padres' closer vying for rare MLB history originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Mason Miller is the most unhittable pitcher in baseball.

If someone said that to you and you didn't know more about the San Diego Padres' right-hander, you'd assume he's a favorite to win the NL Cy Young, right?

Well, it's a bit more complicated than that.

Miller is a closer, not a starting pitcher.

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Can Mason Miller, a reliever, win the Cy Young?​

Yes, Miller is eligible for the Cy Young. All pitchers are.

It's just incredibly rare for a relief pitcher to win it. The last one to do so was Eric Gagne in 2003.

The voters will generally value the much higher quantity of innings thrown by the top starters over the top relievers.

Miller, though, is on such an absurd level that it's not impossible.

"Miller is closing games for the Padres in such dominant fashion that it’s invoking memories of Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera, two of the best closers of all-time," wrote The Athletic's Jim Bowden in a new article on Monday. "In seven outings this season, Miller has faced 24 batters and has struck out 19 of them (23.3 K/9). He’s allowed only one hit and one walk in 7 1/3 innings, has converted all of his save attempts and has a seemingly impossible negative FIP (-1.65). If he keeps this up, he’ll be in the conversation with Paul Skenes, Cristopher Sánchez, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani and Chris Sale for the NL Cy Young Award."

Miller likely has to maintain almost this level of dominance the whole way, though.

If he's just a superstar and not historically great, it may not be enough from his closer role to win the Cy Young.

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