Right now, there’s a battle between Jacob deGrom and Yu Darvish for the National League Cy Young. There’s a significant issue with this as for all intents and purposes deGrom and Darvish pitch in completely different leagues.

The Mets entire 60 game season is against teams in the NL and AL East. The Cubs season is entirely against the NL and AL Central. As such, deGrom and Darvish will not have one opponent in common.

Not one.

It is interesting to debate if deGrom or Darvish is better this year. It’s also interesting to include Shane Bieber in a discussion about who has been the best overall. It should be noted among these three, it’s Bieber and Darvish playing similar schedules.

Logically speaking, the Cy Young race should then be between Bieber and Darvish for the Central Cy Young. This could be extrapolated further.

Mookie Betts and Fernando Tatis, Jr. could be battling each other for the West MVP instead of just the NL MVP. That means Michael Conforto and Trea Turner are now more viable MVP candidates as they battle out with Willy Adames for the East MVP.

But we know baseball won’t do this. Instead, they’ll have two pitchers not facing one team in common battle it out for the NL Cy Young. When you break it down, the only reason for this is this is how things have been done since 1967.

Just because that’s the way things have always been done, it doesn’t mean that’s how things should be done now. There’s a pandemic which changed the length and format of the schedule. The awards handed out should reflect that.

In order to do that, MLB should award an East, Central, and West Cy Young, MVP, and every award MLB hands out each year.