{"id":375068,"date":"2025-11-13T03:48:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T03:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/375068\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T03:48:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T03:48:20","slug":"paul-skenes-wins-nl-cy-young-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/375068\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Skenes Wins NL Cy Young Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Skenes<\/a><\/strong> has won his first career Cy Young award. The Pirates righty is named the National League\u2019s best pitcher one year after winning Rookie of the Year and finishing third in Cy Young balloting. He beat out Cristopher S\u00e1nchez<\/a><\/strong> and\u00a0Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a><\/strong> for the honors. The vote was unanimous, as he received all 30 first-place votes. S\u00e1nchez was second on every ballot, so it wasn\u2019t until third that voters began to diverge.<\/p>\n

Skenes is the third pitcher in franchise history to win the Cy Young, joining\u00a0Vernon Law<\/strong><\/a> (1960) and\u00a0Doug Drabek<\/strong><\/a> (1990). He turned in an MLB-best 1.97 earned run average over his first full season in the big leagues. He\u2019d posted a 1.96 mark across 23 starts as a rookie. He\u2019s the only starting pitcher in the majors with a sub-2.00 ERA over the past two seasons. Skenes ranked fourth in the NL with 187 2\/3 innings pitched and tied Jes\u00fas Luzardo<\/strong><\/a> for second with 216 strikeouts.<\/p>\n

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Only Logan Webb<\/strong><\/a> recorded more strikeouts. Skenes ranked fifth in strikeout rate (minimum 100 innings) and third behind Webb and S\u00e1nchez with 20 quality starts. He led the Senior Circuit with a 2.36 FIP and placed fifth with a 3.10 SIERA. FanGraphs and Baseball Reference each had him in essentially a dead heat with S\u00e1nchez for the Wins Above Replacement lead.<\/p>\n

The 2023 first overall pick is widely considered one of the two best pitchers in the sport. There\u2019s a fair debate between him and two-time AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal<\/strong><\/a>, but they\u2019re almost certainly 1-2 in some order. Fans of other teams may dream about prying Skenes out of Pittsburgh, but that\u2019s not happening anytime soon. General manager Ben Cherington stated in no uncertain terms<\/a> yesterday that their ace would remain a Pirate in 2026. He\u2019s under club control for another four seasons, and while a trade may be in the cards down the line, the immediate focus for player and team is getting the Bucs to the postseason. Skenes is the most important player on a team trying to break a decade-long playoff drought.<\/p>\n

S\u00e1nchez had a breakout season to establish himself as a true ace for the Phillies. He fired 202 innings of 2.50 ERA ball across 32 starts. He finished fourth in the NL with 212 strikeouts. S\u00e1nchez had been a borderline top-of-the-rotation starter between 2023-24, earning a top 10 Cy Young finish in the second of those seasons. This was his first time posting a sub-3.00 ERA or topping 200 innings and strikeouts, so he certainly leveled up in his age-28 season. He\u2019s signed through 2028 and under control through \u201930 via a pair of club options on one of the most team-friendly contracts in the game.<\/p>\n

Yamamoto\u2019s World Series heroics weren\u2019t a factor in the voting, which takes place at the end of the regular season. He earned his first All-Star nod and first Cy Young votes by turning in a 2.49 ERA across 30 starts. Yamamoto managed 201 strikeouts across 173 2\/3 innings while leading the NL with fewer than six hits allowed per nine innings. Yamamoto had flashed ace potential in his first MLB season, but he was limited to 18 starts by a rotator cuff strain in 2024. He showed what he\u2019s capable of in a full season in year two, and the Dodgers have won consecutive World Series in the first two seasons of his record-setting $325MM free agent contract.<\/p>\n

Just over half of voters placed Yamamoto third. Webb received 10 third-place votes and finished fourth overall. Freddy Peralta<\/strong><\/a> picked up the four remaining third-place nods and landed in fifth place. Skenes and S\u00e1nchez were the only pitchers who appeared on every ballot.\u00a0Nick Pivetta<\/strong><\/a>, Jes\u00fas Luzardo, Andrew Abbott<\/strong><\/a> and\u00a0Zack Wheeler<\/strong><\/a> also received votes.<\/p>\n

Image courtesy of Katie Stratman, Imagn Images. Full vote tally available<\/a> courtesy of BBWAA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Skenes has won his first career Cy Young award. The Pirates righty is named the National League\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":375069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[34482,149325,20395,8740,20411,80163,34554,62,67,132,68,20410,3683],"class_list":{"0":"post-375068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-andrew-abbott","9":"tag-cristopher-sanchez","10":"tag-freddy-peralta","11":"tag-jesus-luzardo","12":"tag-logan-webb","13":"tag-nick-pivetta","14":"tag-paul-skenes","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-yoshinobu-yamamoto","20":"tag-zack-wheeler"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115540348974740284","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}