3 reasons Sandy Alcantara deserves the NL Cy Young Award over Max Fried and others contenders

Sandy Alcantara is the frontrunner to win the National League Cy Young Award, and for good reason. While the Miami Marlins have had a disappointing season, Alcantara has shined. The ace has attained a 12-7 record, a 2.43 earned run average (ERA), and 177 strikeouts on the season.

Sandy Alcantara has outperformed most pitchers in the league this year. While having a 12-7 record, Alcantara has pitched four complete games this season. No other pitcher in the league has played more than two complete games. Most pitchers haven't even had a single complete game this year. He has more complete games himself than any team does as a whole.

Alcantara has been a workhorse for the Marlins this year. Along with leading the league in complete games, he has a dominant lead in innings pitched as well. He has pitched 196.2 innings so far this year. He has thrown 15.1 more innings than Miles Mikolas of the St. Louis Cardinals, who has thrown 181.1 innings this year.

The Marlins have put this workload on Alcantara for a reason: he has been dealing this year. The Marlins ace has a great fastball that he averages 98 MPH on, but it's his changeup where he's most effective. He uses his changeup as a put-out pitch on two strikes and averages around 92 MPH on it. His changeup is only about 6 MPH slower than his fastball and fools hitters into striding too early.

Alcanatara has been efficient this year. He leads all National League pitchers in wins above replacement (WAR) with 6.8. Max Fried of the Atlanta Braves is quite a way away from Alcantara with a 5.5 WAR. Sandy Alcantara is third in all of the National League in WAR, including fielders.

Is Sandy Alcantara's workload finally catching up to him?

Sandy Alcantara still possesses these insane statistics while coming off of two bad games in a row. In his last two starts, Alcanatara has failed to get past the sixth inning, only going five to six innings. With that said, he still has a controlling lead on innings pitched this season.

Some believe that this is a sign of Alcantara starting to fatigue. It would make sense with the workload that has been put on him this year.

People around the league believe that Max Fried will surpass Alcantara by the end of the season. The only statistic that Fried has over Alcantara is his record. Fried has a 13-6 record this year, giving him one more win than Alcanatara. Max Fried will have to hope that the Marlins shut down Alcanatara for him to have a chance to win the NL Cy Young Award.