St. Louis Cardinals: Carlos Martinez wins 2018 Cy Young Award

The St. Louis Cardinals have a lot of young pitching talent and one of them are bound to bring home the Cy Young award in their career while pitching with the Cardinals.

The St. Louis Cardinals have not had a Cy Young award winner since 2005 by Chris Carpenter. Since then, Adam Wainwright has had a chance to win the award, but Clayton Kershaw has always been the better pitcher in those seasons to walk away with the honors.

This season will be different though in thanks to Carlos Martinez.

Martinez made his major league debut in 2013 and has made a big impact to the starting rotation since 2015.

In his short career, he has a career earned run average of 3.45, 702 innings pitched, a WHIP of 1.28, 688 strike outs and a record of 46-33, including his opening day start against the New York Mets on Thursday.

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Last season though, he posted a career high ERA of 3.64 since becoming a starter, 205 innings pitched, a WHIP of 1.22, striking out a career high of 217 batters, having a record of 12-11 and walking away with his first two shutouts of his career.

If Martinez wants to carry the starting rotation and bring home the Cardinals first Cy Young award since 2005, there are a couple of things that he needs to work on. His control and his emotions.

Since his major league debut in 2013, both the Cardinals and fans knew that he played with a lot of emotion on his shoulder. Today it is helping him perform on the mound but it is also hurting him when things are not going his way.

Some people can say he is still a young player and learning to control his emotions will eventually come. What I will say though is that he has been in the league now for 5 years, going into his sixth, and has had time to learn to control it.

Once he learns how to control his emotions, he will be able to work on his overall control. I say that because when Martinez gets worked up on the mound he wants to overthrow the baseball, which either makes him throw the ball into the dirt or way out of the strike zone.

Looking back on his opening day start, Martinez got into some trouble early in the game and you noticed his emotions were running a little wild. The ball was flying out of his hand and he was working a little faster than he normally does.

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If Martinez can work on his control and emotions this season and get it all figure out soon, we are looking at the 2018 Cy Young Award winner.