Listen to this article
Estimated 4 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.
The individual trophy cases for Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal are growing increasingly full.
The next step in the evolution of baseball’s two best pitchers is winning — preferably where they are.
The 23-year-old Skenes capped his blistering rise to stardom by capturing the National League Cy Young Award on Wednesday night. The Pittsburgh Pirates ace was a unanimous choice by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, the honor coming minutes after Skubal won baseball’s premier pitching prize in the American League for the second straight year as the anchor of the Detroit Tigers.
As gratified as they are by the recognition, both said they are eager for their respective teams to get in on the act in 2026.
That’s where things get tricky.
Future cloudy with current clubs
The 28-year-old Skubal is entering his final year of club control, and while he would like to stay in Detroit beyond next season, he’s also well aware the Tigers could trade him as a business decision, considering the hefty raise the left-hander figures to command should he hit the open market as a free agent.
It’s much the same for Skenes, who remains under team control for the rest of the decade but found himself pushing back against a report that he’s already told teammates he is eager to move on.
“I don’t know where that came from,” Skenes said. “The goal is to win and the goal is to win in Pittsburgh.”
The Pirates finished last in the NL Central in 2025, well off the pace of front-running Milwaukee. The first pitcher since Dwight Gooden with the New York Mets in the mid-1980s to win Rookie of the Year one season and a Cy Young Award the next remains optimistic Pittsburgh is closer to contending than most think.
“The way that fans see us outside of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is not supposed to win,” Skenes said. “There are 29 fan bases that expect us to lose. I want to be a part of the 26 guys that change that.”
Pirates’ ace dominates in 1st full season
Skenes — selected first overall by the Pirates in the 2023 amateur draft after a standout career at Air Force and LSU — did his part in 2025, leading the majors in ERA (1.97) while striking out 216 batters in 187 1/3 innings during his first full season in the big leagues.
Yet even with his brilliance, Skenes needed a little late help from Pittsburgh’s woeful offense to avoid becoming the first Cy Young-winning starting pitcher to finish with a losing record. Skenes won three of his final four decisions to finish 10-10.
That so-so win/loss mark didn’t stop the towering 6-foot-6 right-hander from placing atop all 30 ballots. Philadelphia left-hander Cristopher Sanchez received every second-place vote, and World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Los Angeles Dodgers finished third.
Sanchez’s 2029 option price increased by $1 million to $15 million and his 2030 option price by $1 million to $16 million as a result of being a Cy Young Award finalist.
Skubal received 26 first-place votes in the AL from a separate BBWAA panel. The other four went to runner-up Garrett Crochet of the Boston Red Sox. Hunter Brown of the Houston Astros came in third.
Skenes and Skubal both started the All-Star Game this year. The only other time the two All-Star Game starters won the Cy Young Awards in the same season was 2001, when Johnson and Roger Clemens accomplished the feat.
MVP awards for both leagues will be handed out Thursday.
Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani is a heavy favorite to repeat in the NL and win for the fourth time overall, including twice in the AL.
New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge is seeking his third AL MVP in what could be a close vote with another top contender, Seattle catcher Cal Raleigh.
Source link
