It’s time to kick out Gerrit Cole. The Just Shy of Cy Club, you could call it, will soon be a five-man rotation again, with two closers. Cole didn’t belong there, anyway.

Tommy John, Jimmy Key, Curt Schilling, Adam Wainwright and Yu Darvish are the only starters to never win a Cy Young Award despite finishing second in the voting at least twice. Two ace relievers, Dan Quisenberry and Trevor Hoffman, are also on the list. As accomplished as those pitchers are, Cole will surely be thrilled to leave them behind.

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When the Baseball Writers’ Association of America announces this year’s Cy Young Award winners on Wednesday, Cole should be the unanimous American League choice. The Yankees’ stalwart right-hander will thus become the only pitcher to win a Cy Young after multiple runner-up finishes in the balloting.

“He’s got a perfect windup, he’s durable, he’s everything you’d want in a starting pitcher — and you knew that even if he wasn’t winning the Cy Young,” said Hall of Famer Jim Palmer, a three-time winner, by phone the other day. “I try not to live in the past, but I do know what the past was about. And when I see him pitch, I have tremendous admiration, because he could have been one of us. I have no doubt about that.”

And Cole left no doubt in 2023. A runner-up to Justin Verlander in 2019 and to Robbie Ray in 2021, he led the AL this year in ERA (2.63), innings (209), and WHIP (0.981) while going 15-4 with 222 strikeouts. Only one AL player — the two-way star Shohei Ohtani — had more bWAR than Cole, and no full-time pitcher was close.

Only one active pitcher without a Cy Young Award has more career WAR than Cole: Boston’s Chris Sale, who has been injured for most of the past five seasons. Cole, meanwhile, has made at least 30 starts in each of the past six full seasons, and worked 200 innings five times in that stretch. He would have made a fine pupil in the old school.

“If you’re a former pitcher, you look at him and you go: This is the way pitchers are supposed to pitch,” Palmer said. “This is how you’re supposed to show up every fifth day. He could have pitched in my era because he could have pitched 300 innings and he could have pitched complete games.

“We know the game’s changed; it’s not just starting pitching, it’s your bullpen, too. But Gerrit Cole is one of those guys that pretty much every time he goes out there, he’s better than the guy on the other team.”

Four years into a nine-year, $324 million contract that remains the most lucrative guarantee ever for a pitcher, Cole has proven he can be better than everyone in a given season. That’s what it takes to win the Cy Young Award, an honor first given in 1956 that can be elusive and capricious.

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Some winners — John Denny, Rick Porcello, Steve Stone and more — never even appeared on a ballot except for the year they won. Five pitchers with multiple postseason MVP awards never did capture a Cy: Josh Beckett, Madison Bumgarner, Cole Hamels, Curt Schilling and Dave Stewart.

Several longtime elite starters — think Kevin Brown, Mickey Lolich, Rick Reuschel, Luis Tiant — could have burnished their legacies had they ever won a Cy. It might have helped them gain traction for the Hall of Fame, too.

Even some who did reach Cooperstown missed out on the honor, which is mentioned on the plaque of every former winner except Warren Spahn. Twenty-one Hall of Famers have won it, but almost as many from the award’s era have not. That includes five relievers — Goose Gossage, Hoffman, Mariano Rivera, Lee Smith and Hoyt Wilhelm — and these nine starters whose prime years came from 1956 onward.

Bert Blyleven

Top finish: 3rd (AL, 1984 and 1985)

Blyleven led his league in bWAR in 1973 and 1981 — but that metric had not been created yet. He finished behind two relievers, Quisenberry and Willie Hernandez, in 1984, but if anyone got snubbed that year, it was Dave Stieb — a seven-time All-Star who never even finished in the top three in Cy balloting. Related: Stieb never won 20 games, which was a big deal to voters back then.

Jim Bunning

Top finish: 2nd (NL, 1967)

Bunning lost out to Mike McCormick of the Giants in 1967, despite working 40 more innings with 103 more strikeouts and a much better ERA (2.29 to 2.85). Alas, Bunning went 17-15 (two games over .500, like his Phillies team), while McCormick apparently just knew how to win, going 22-10 for a very good Giants team.

Jim Kaat

Top finish: 4th (AL, 1975)

Although 1975 was a strong year for Kaat, the finest of his 25 major-league seasons was probably 1966, when he led the AL in victories, complete games and innings with the fewest walks per nine. Unfortunately for Kaat, this was the final year that the BBWAA gave out an overall Cy Young Award, not one for each league — and the Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax, a National Leaguer, won unanimously.

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Juan Marichal

Top finish: 8th (NL, 1971)

Marichal played his entire, high-kicking career in the Cy Young Award era — but, like Kaat, he did much of his best work when just one pitcher was honored each season. Marichal had more wins than any other pitcher from 1963 through 1969, but Koufax, Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Dean Chance and McCormick took the honors instead. And since writers in that era voted only for first place, Marichal never even appeared on a ballot until 1971.

Jack Morris

Top finish: 3rd (AL, 1981 and 1983)

Morris led the Tigers to a World Series championship in 1984, but his best year was the previous season, when he worked 293 2/3 innings, a total that has not been topped since. Morris also led the league in strikeouts in ’83, logged 20 wins and had a respectable 3.34 ERA — but voters ranked him behind the league leader in wins (LaMarr Hoyt) and saves (Quisenberry) because that’s how they rolled in the ’80s.

Mike Mussina

Top finish: 2nd (AL, 1999)

“I tell him, ‘You’re Mr. Almost,’” Mike Borzello, the Yankees’ bullpen catcher and Mussina’s close friend, said late in Mussina’s career. “‘You almost won a Cy Young. You almost won 20 games. You almost won a World Series — everything.’” Mussina never did win a Cy nor a World Series, but he finally reached 20 wins on the last day of his career, in 2008, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2019. He’s Mr. Almost no more.

Phil Niekro

Top finish: 2nd (NL, 1969)

In 2012, when R.A. Dickey won the Cy Young for the Mets, it was hard to believe that no knuckleballer had ever won it before. But Niekro’s durability somewhat obscured his extraordinary value; he won and lost prodigiously, mostly for also-ran Braves teams. In 1979, when Niekro became the last pitcher to both win and lose 20 in the same season, he led the majors in bWAR for pitchers but finished sixth in the NL Cy Young voting. Niekro worked 342 innings that season — 240 2/3 more than the winner, Cubs closer Bruce Sutter. It was a different time.

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Nolan Ryan

Top finish: 2nd (AL, 1973)

When Ryan set the single-season strikeout record in 1973, with 383, Angels general manager Harry Dalton thought he knew what that meant. “They ought to give Cy Young the Nolan Ryan Award!” Dalton declared. Yet Ryan also led the majors in walks that season and finished second to Palmer, who had more wins, a better ERA and a lower WHIP than Ryan. Fourteen years later, with Houston, Ryan led the NL in ERA and strikeouts but somehow went 8-16. The puzzled voters gave the Cy to the league leader in saves, Philadelphia’s Steve Bedrosian, and placed Ryan fifth.

Don Sutton

Top finish: 3rd (NL, 1976)

Sutton spread his 324 victories across 23 seasons, topping the sacred 20-win mark just once, at 21-10 in 1976. Naturally that earned him his best Cy Young finish, though he had better seasons for the Dodgers. Four years later, in 1980, Sutton didn’t appear on a single Cy Young ballot despite a strikingly similar performance to Gerrit Cole’s this year:

Sutton: 13-5, 2.20 ERA, 212 1/3 IP, 163 hits, 0.989 WHIP, 20 HR allowed, 833 batters faced, 161 ERA+

Cole: 15-4, 2.63 ERA, 209 IP, 157 hits, 0.981 WHIP, 20 HR allowed, 821 batters faced, 165 ERA+

Sutton was not the league’s best pitcher in 1980 — Steve Carlton was, easily — but his stellar season is largely forgotten. Many years from now, Cole’s virtual copy of it will likely be commemorated in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown.

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(Top photo of Gerrit Cole: Daniel Shirey / MLB Photos via Getty Images)