Dustin May’s perfect game through six innings and a one-hit, one-walk shutout helped push his 2026 performance to the top of the NL conversation. With his 2026–27 free-agent class described as thin, May’s improved stretch is now reviving expectations about how
On Monday night at Busch Stadium, Dustin May didn’t just look sharp—he looked untouchable. The right-hander was perfect through six innings, then finished with a one-hit, one-walk shutout. He threw 101 pitches and struck out nine.
If not for Jacob Misiorowski’s 15-strikeout tour de force last Friday. it might have been the most impressive pitching line of the season. Still, May’s outing landed hard. It dropped his ERA under 4.00 and moved him into the NL’s top 10 in quality starts and FanGraphs WAR. His numbers are tracking like a pitcher getting better by the start: he owns a 3.38 xERA and a 3.75 SIERA.
The underlying splits are what make analysts sit up. Only two qualified pitchers in either league have a lower home run rate, a lower walk rate, and a higher strikeout rate this season: Cam Schlittler and Cristopher Sánchez.
But even this glow has edges.
A shutout can inflate anyone’s stat line. May’s home run-to-fly-ball ratio won’t keep sitting where it is—currently less than half his rate from 2019-25. At the same time, his BABIP is significantly higher than his career average, while his strand rate is markedly lower. The combination points to a pitcher’s month balancing “good” fortune with “bad luck,” leaving his ERA and SIERA matching at 3.75.
Baseball Prospectus pegs his “deserved ERA” at 3.77. ZiPS forecasts a 3.78 for the rest of the season. The PitchingBot model translates his arsenal into 3.85 earned runs per nine. Different methods, same destination: May has earned his success so far in 2026.
That matters more than usual because May’s free-agent standing is already part of this story. He was an honorable mention on MLBTR’s last Top 50 Free Agents ranking. The $12.5MM guarantee he secured from the Cardinals surprised some, but it didn’t come from a misread. He wasn’t a top-50 lock last offseason; in terms of total salary. his contract was the 51st largest of the offseason. Still. with the way he’s pitching—and the way the market is shaped—this winter’s conversation could look different.
The 2026–27 free agent class is described as thin. It’s thin enough that Michael Soroka was one of five players who just missed the top 10 on MLBTR’s latest Free Agent Power Rankings.
That’s where Soroka enters May’s narrative—not as a storyline twist, but as a comparison with a history.
May and Soroka pitch differently on the surface. May leads with a sinker that touches 99 against righties and a four-seam that touches 99 against lefties. Soroka’s max velocity is three ticks slower, and his primary pitch is an 80-mph slurve. Yet the two right-handers were born 33 days apart in 1997, and their paths through baseball rhyme more than you’d expect.
They were once star prospects. Their rookie debuts didn’t just bring hope—they delivered it. Then injuries derailed both careers. The change came in 2025: each made double-digit starts for the first time since their rookie campaigns. They then signed one-year contracts in free agency, each with mutual options for 2027.
The contract-worthy production that earned those deals shows up in the career numbers through 2025:
May: 3.86 ERA, 4.25 SIERA, 21.9% K rate, 8.3% BB rate, 46.6% GB rate.
Soroka: 3.85 ERA, 4.29 SIERA, 21.8% K rate, 8.0% BB rate, 47.1% GB rate.
The intention is clear in how the stats sit side by side—practically indistinguishable. Soroka has thrown more innings in his career, but May has thrown more recently. On a per-inning basis, those first six seasons of their respective careers were “pretty much the same pitcher.”
In 2026, they’re close again in how they’re valued. Through their first 14 starts, May ranks ninth in the National League in FanGraphs WAR. Soroka is one spot ahead, and the margin is so small that a rounding error could erase it. Soroka’s ERA is better, but May’s edge is in xERA. Soroka has the lower walk rate, while May has induced more ground balls. SIERA favors Soroka, but most of the major pitch models lean toward what May brings. ZiPS projects nearly identical performance from each of them for the rest of the season.
If Soroka is headed toward a spot among next winter’s top 20 free agents, May fits into that conversation too.
Soroka carries more name recognition because of what happened in the past: an All-Star appearance. a Rookie of the Year runner-up finish. and down-ballot Cy Young votes. It’s an impressive resume. It’s also seven years old. The argument for May isn’t about discrediting what Soroka did—it’s about timing and what might still be left.
If either pitcher still has an All-Star ceiling, the suggestion is that it could be May. He throws harder and shows a deeper arsenal, with six pitches thrown at least 5% of the time. In 2026, only three starting pitchers (min. 50 IP) have thrown six different pitches at least that often with an average fastball harder than May’s: Dylan Cease. Sandy Alcantara. and Eury Pérez. Pérez is offered as the example that velocity and pitch variety can coexist at the top level.
Teams pay for that kind of profile. Just last winter, the Blue Jays gave Cease $210MM because they saw the “blueprint” for a more consistent ace. May isn’t projected to approach nine figures. But in a thinner market, that doesn’t eliminate interest—it spreads it.
There’s another side to this, and it’s impossible to ignore with May.
It’s far too soon to write his blurb for the top 50 list as if the outcome is set. When the last Free Agent Power Rankings came out, May still had a 4.59 ERA. That was less than two weeks ago. The numbers can shift quickly, one start changing how people interpret the whole curve.
And then there’s the biggest variable: staying healthy.
May has already torn his UCL twice. The elbow neuritis from last September proved minor. The esophageal tear that ended his 2024 season had nothing to do with baseball activities. Still, a resume that includes that kind of interruption comes with a reality attached. He has never topped 24 starts or 150 innings in a season—at either the major or minor league level.
This year could be different. Not because the past disappears, but because it’s finally aligning with the simple requirement that pitching markets tend to reward: on-field availability.
All he needs to do is keep showing up and keep pitching the way he has in 2026. If he does, Dustin May won’t just be a name watching from the mound—he’ll be a name teams will have to consider when they start scanning next winter’s market.
Maybe the broader free agent class stays weak. Maybe the field stays thin. But either way, the immediate, human stakes are the same: with every start, May can boost his free agent stock—and give his long-awaited momentum a chance to last.
Dustin May free agent stock Busch Stadium perfect through six NL WAR xERA SIERA Jacob Misiorowski Cam Schlittler Cristopher Sánchez Michael Soroka FanGraphs WAR ZiPS PitchingBot Baseball Prospectus