Tarik Skubal has his first Cy Young award. The Baseball Writers Association of America announced that the Tigers ace won the AL Cy Young by a unanimous margin. He received all 30 first-place votes. Kansas City’s Seth Lugo placed runner-up, while Cleveland closer Emmanuel Clase rounded out the top three.
Whether Skubal would win the award was never in doubt. The hard-throwing southpaw, who turns 28 today, won the AL’s pitching Triple Crown. He led the Junior Circuit with a 2.39 earned run average across 192 innings. He held the major league lead in wins (18) and strikeouts (228). Skubal was essentially dominant from start to finish, as he didn’t allow an ERA higher than 3.05 in any month. He carried a 2.41 mark into the All-Star Break to earn his first selection to the Midsummer Classic.
Skubal fired 76 innings of 2.37 ERA ball after the Break, serving as the one constant in a Detroit rotation that was patched together after the Jack Flaherty deadline trade. He was the biggest contributor to the Tigers’ Cinderella run to a Wild Card in the second half. He punctuated the regular season with seven scoreless innings in a 2-1 victory over the Rays that more or less ensured Detroit would clinch a playoff spot in the final weekend of the regular season.
This was the first season in which Skubal topped 150 innings. He looked like a budding ace in 2022, when he turned in a 3.52 ERA with huge strikeout numbers across 21 starts. A late-season flexor injury brought that year to a halt. Skubal underwent flexor surgery in August and was out into July ’23. He struck out 102 batters with a 2.80 ERA in 15 starts to close that season. Skubal was a trendy preseason Cy Young pick if he could stay healthy. He more than lived up to that promise.
More to come.