Tarik Skubal Wins American League Cy Young Award

From Major League Baseball:

Braves veteran Chris Sale can now add “Cy Young winner” to his potential Hall of Fame résumé and Tigers ace Tarik Skubal - who was voted for the honor unanimously - can do the same to his promising profile after the two were named the winners of the National League and American League Cy Young Awards presented by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Wednesday night on MLB Network.

This was an expected result for the two left-handed hurlers, each of whom claimed the pitching Triple Crown by leading his league in wins, ERA and strikeouts. This was only the fourth time in history – and the first since 2011 (Tigers’ Justin Verlander and Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw) – that both leagues had a pitching Triple Crown winner in the same season.

The Cy Young honor is a career first for Sale, who finished in the top six of the AL voting every year from 2012 through 2018 with the White Sox and Red Sox. After several injury-plagued years in Boston, Sale came to the Braves in a trade last winter and instantly reclaimed his elite status by going 18-3 (setting a career high in wins) with an MLB-best 2.38 ERA and 174 ERA+ and an NL-best 225 strikeouts in his 177 2/3 innings. He was an All-Star for the eighth time in his career and the first time since 2018, and an important linchpin for an Atlanta rotation that suffered the early-season loss of ace Spencer Strider to Tommy John surgery.

Sale had already been named NL Comeback Player of the Year at the All-MLB Awards Show last week.

While the 35-year-old Sale was adding some late-career credence to his Cooperstown case, Skubal was – much like Sale in the 2010s – up in the AL Central proving himself a top-of-the-rotation force to be reckoned with. The result is that Skubal celebrated his 28th birthday Wednesday with the game’s top pitching prize.

Skubal had demonstrated his potential in the past, but flexor tendon surgery prematurely ended his 2022 season and delayed the start of his 2023 campaign. Fully healthy in 2024, he made the leap, going 18-4 with an AL-best 2.39 ERA and 170 ERA+ and an MLB-best 228 strikeouts in his 192 innings. The ERA was the lowest by a qualified Detroit starter since Mark Fidrych’s rookie season of 1976 (2.34). He held opponents to two runs or fewer in 24 of his 31 starts.

On a Tigers team that traded Jack Flaherty midseason, Skubal was a constant atop a thin rotation. He was the reason manager A.J. Hinch was able to aggressively deploy his bullpen the other days of the week as Detroit surged to an unlikely postseason berth in the second half. And though it didn’t factor into the voting, Skubal became a true household name in October when he shut down the Astros in Game 1 of the AL Wild Card Series, which the Tigers would go on to sweep.

Sale is the Braves’ first Cy Young winner since Tom Glavine in 1998 and the eighth overall. Skubal is the Tigers’ first winner since Max Scherzer in 2013 and their sixth overall.