New York Yankees ace right-hander Gerrit Cole finished second to then-Toronto Blue Jays starter Robbie Ray in the 2021 AL Cy Young award vote. It’s the second time in the last three years that Cole has finished second in the running, as he fell just short to teammate Justin Verlander back in 2019 when the two were on the Houston Astros. Cole looked like the undisputed favorite to take home the hardware last year, though he struggled to replicate his first-half performance, with some attributing his lack of success to baseball’s crackdown on the sticky substances used by hurlers. Cole, for his part, has made it clear that he feels that baseball’s strict rules for pitchers won’t affect his production. There’s reason to believe him, as the Yankees ace figured out a way to pitch differently this past season while finding the same amount of success. Perhaps that, along with Cole’s elite arsenal of pitches, will be enough to vault him to the top of the AL CY Young leaderboard in 2022. That said, here are three reasons why Cole will take home the hardware in 2022.

3. The AL CY Young competition isn’t as strong for Cole

Baseball has changed the way it evaluates pitchers in recent years. Wins used to be looked at as the ultimate determining factor in how good of a season a starter had. While still important, it’s clear that other statistics, such as ERA, carry more weight than wins in showing how successful a pitcher was in a given season. 2021 was dominated by National League pitchers. The first six starters on the 2021 ERA leaderboard hailed from the NL, which is a staggering level of disparity between the leagues. There’s no guarantee that that will continue, though there’s reason to believe that the National League will be well-represented once again, given that aces such as New York Mets’ star Jacob deGrom and San Diego Padres righty Yu Darvish, normally towards the top of the board, were not among the leaders.