Will Britton be named top AL reliever?

As the World Series continues tonight with Game 4 at Wrigley Field, it's also important to note that we've entered awards season.

Sporting News has dished out its hardware and the Rawlings Gold Glove finalists were revealed on Thursday. The Relievers of the Year will be announced later today, with one winner in each league.

The American League award is named after Mariano Rivera, and the NL award is named after Trevor Hoffman. Somewhere, Heathcliff Slocumb is fuming.

The awards were first issued in 2014 and replaced the Major League Baseball Delivery Man of the Year Award, which had been presented since 2005. The name change was important after another driver from China Garden inadvertently won it.

According to the Wikipedia page - and anyone can contribute to it, so it must be accurate - the Reliever of the Year Awards are determined based on a vote of a nine-member panel made up of Rivera, Hoffman, Dennis Eckersley, Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage, Bruce Sutter, Lee Smith, John Franco and Billy Wagner. This represents the four living relief pitchers who are in the Hall of Fame and the top five relievers in career saves.

Each voter selects three pitchers from each league based solely on their performance in the regular season. A 5-3-1 weighted point system is used to determine the winner.

The Royals' Greg Holland was the AL winner in 2014 and then-Yankees left-hander Andrew Miller won it last year. No Oriole has been honored going back to 2005, but that should change today.

How can it be anyone except Zach Britton?

Let's review:

Britton recorded 47 consecutive saves this season, going 47-for-47. According to STATS, Britton has the longest save streak in as many chances to start a season by a left-handed pitcher in major league history and ranks third all-time. He led the AL and tied for second in the majors in saves and his 0.54 ERA - four earned runs in 67 innings was the lowest in history among pitchers with at least 50 innings.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, only two other pitchers in history have posted an ERA below 1.00 in a season with at least 40 saves - Dennis Eckersley in 1990 (0.61, 48 saves) and Fernando Rodney in 2012 (0.60, 48 saves). And only one of them wore his cap crooked, but I digress ...

Britton ranks third on the Orioles all-time saves list with 120 and is one of only two left-handers in club history with at least 100 career saves, joining pickoff artist Tippy Martinez.

Britton is the active major league leader with 49 consecutive saves dating back to Oct. 1, 2015. He could be the 10th reliever to win the Cy Young and the first since the Dodgers' Eric Gagne in 2003.

My guess is the Cy Young comes down to Britton, the Red Sox's Rick Porcello and the Indians' Corey Kluber, but as always, I could be wrong.

Britton's 120 career saves are the third-most in club history. Jim Johnson is second with 122.

An overlooked Britton stat: He stranded 16 of 18 inherited runners this season.

The least-surprising Britton stat: He ranked first among all relievers in groundball/fly ball ratio (9.77) and in groundball percentage (79.4).

So who's the biggest threat to Britton today? Francisco Rodriguez ranked second in the league with 44 saves in 49 chances, but he also posted a 3.24 ERA. Miller went 10-1 with a 1.45 ERA and 0.69 WHIP, and he struck out 123 batters in 74 1/3 innings.

Miller sounds like runner-up material to me.

Shameless plug alert: I'll be at Camden Yards this morning for the seventh annual KidsPeace Trick-or-Trot 5K/1-mile walk before changing clothes and appearing on "Wall-to-Wall Baseball" that airs from noon-2 p.m. on MASN.