Wait. Could Bailey Ober Really Win the 2025 AL Cy Young?

The Athletic staff recently predicted who they believe will win the major baseball awards this season. Grant Brisbee, the Giants’ beat writer for The Athletic, opined that Bailey Ober will win the 2025 AL Cy Young award. None of the other nine panelists agreed with his pick. Is there something there, and could Ober take that kind of a step forward?

Before you tell me that’s just homerism, what if I told you that MLB.com also listed Ober as a dark horse candidate for the award? Maybe it’s actually a little bit credible. We know Ober has elite extension, great control and command, strikes a ton of guys out, and has a great presence on the mound. We know he’s a very good pitcher. But is he elite? And can he get there? There's certainly a lot of red on his Savant page.

What’s the Target?
To know whether this is even remotely realistic, it’s important to establish what type of results typically get a hurler the top spot from the BBWAA writers. Let’s start by looking at the past ten seasons’ winners. If you create the average Cy Young winner, you are looking for a season of roughly the following: 6.32 bWAR, 220 strikeouts, a 2.36 ERA, and 208 innings pitched. That seems like a good target.

What have Ober’s best seasons looked like in each of those categories so far? Ober’s 2023 season was best by bWAR, at 3.1. That’s about halfway there. In 2024, he struck out 191 which isn’t too far off of the 220 strikeout goal. In 2022, he finished the season with a 3.21 ERA. In 2024, his expected ERA was a nearly-identical 3.22. That’s good, but that’s still almost a full run worse than an average Cy Young winner. 2024 was also his high-water mark in innings pitched, with 178-2/3 logged. That’s not super far off from the average award winner.

Ok, with all that in mind, we are looking for Ober to find about 30 strikeouts across 30 extra innings, to avoid clunker starts, and to reduce his ERA by a full run over his strongest seasons. That…seems like a lot. But it’s certainly not impossible. What would have to go right for Ober to take a big enough step forward to show legit dominance?

Pitch Mix and Sequencing
To begin with (and honestly, maybe this alone would do it), he needs to improve his results against righties. For his career, Ober allows roughly 50 additional points of slugging to same-sided hitters. This is not uncommon for pitchers that throw a great changeup, and Ober’s is certainly that. In fact, it’s his best pitch by far, worth 16 runs in 2024. It’s a true out pitch. When he pairs it with his middling but effective fastball while mixing in a curveball and slider, he’s death to lefties; he had a .592 OPS against them last season. But, he can’t throw this combo to righties or he gets downright average results, to the tune of a .703 OPS in 2024.

Luckily, his second-best pitch, his slider, can be thrown to right-handed hitters to get outs. But, he needs a quality offering to set that up, and his fastball/change combo doesn’t get it done. The shape of those pitches is too dissimilar from the slider, and hitters have an easier time of recognizing what’s coming to them and can sit fastball to do damage. If only Ober threw a pitch that could potentially trick lefty batters until it was too late to use their A swing. A sinker maybe.

What if I told you that Ober has been using a new sinker throughout spring training this year? And what if I told you the movement characteristics of that pitch pair somewhat nicely with his slider?

That’s an interesting development, to be certain. Now, pitchers experiment with new pitches all the time in the spring. Often, it’s just tinkering, and the new offerings are abandoned in the Florida or Arizona heat. In this case, though, it could certainly be deliberate. If he throws even a few of these sinkers in his start on Sunday, then this could be a very interesting season for him.

The last piece around pitch mix and sequencing: Ober allows an elite batting average against. In fact, it’s virtually identical to Dylan Cease and Tarik Skubal. You know, Cy Young-caliber pitchers. But, a few too many of Ober’s hits go yard. In fact, his Pull AIR% is fifth-worst among starting pitchers that faced at least 500 batters last season. If Ober can cut down on pitches that can easily be pulled up, he’s instantly one of the best pitchers in baseball.

Avoiding Clunker Starts
Look, when you are 6’9”, sometimes your mechanics are going to be a bit off. Honestly, there’s not a ton that can be done about that. And, Ober doesn't have more blowups than other Twins starters. However, there may be one type of clunker start that can be solved for. Over the past two seasons, three of Ober’s four worst starts have come against the Royals, to the tune of 20 runs across 10-1/3 innings.

It’s possible that’s just weird, small sample size noise. More likely, the Royals have something on him. That is for the coaching staff to figure out. But, that alone could help make progress in all of those target categories above.

Putting this all together, we are talking about tweaks rather than wholesale changes: add a usable setup pitch for righties, figure out what the Royals have on him, and cut down on the homers if possible. While all of these are easier said than done, they are all feasible adjustments. If even a couple of these go right, it does seem like Ober has a legitimate path to receiving some Cy Young votes. But, he will still face some tough competition.