With the final month of the regular season underway in Major League Baseball, the award races are starting to heat up. One of the most wide-open races is for the National League Cy Young Award and Chicago Cubs ace Justin Steele made his case to win it with a brilliant start against the San Francisco Giants on Monday.

In front of a raucous Wrigley Field crowd, Steele tossed eight scoreless innings and struck out a career-high 12 batters to earn his MLB-leading 16th win of the season.

“It’s just Wrigley. It’s just the fans realizing the moment,” Steele said, via Jordan Bastian. “They brought the energy and I kind of like to feed off it. It was awesome to pitch in that environment.”

Steele's 2023 season has been full of standout performances, but none of them were quite like Monday's. His numbers look plenty good enough to win the award as he's posted a 16-3 record with 153 strikeouts and a 2.55 ERA, the second-best ERA among qualified starters.

Not only did Steele pick a great time to have this sort of performance for his Cy Young resume, but the Cubs needed a win to maintain their three-game cushion in the NL wild card picture. The Giants are one of four teams trying to chase down the Cubs for one of the three wild card spots. The Cubs guaranteed that the Giants couldn’t catch them during this three-game set with the series-opening win.

With Marcus Stroman sidelined, Justin Steele has stepped up in a big way for the Cubs. His last four starts were all quality starts and the Cubs went 4-0 in those games. Steele could find himself holding some hardware if he continues pitching like that.