Atlanta's Chris Sale and Detroit's Tarik Skubal earned their first Cy Young awards Wednesday night after both left-handers shared the MLB lead with 18 wins and led their respective leagues in strikeouts and earned run average. Award-winning.
Sale was 18-3, leading the National League with 225 strikeouts, and in his first season with the Braves, his 2.38 ERA in 29 starts was the best among major league qualifiers.
The 35-year-old is an All-Star for the eighth time and won his first Gold Glove this year.
Skubal, who turned 28 on Wednesday, started 31 games for the Tigers, going 18-4 with a 2.39 ERA and a major league-best 228 strikeouts.
He was the unanimous winner of the American League Award voting by the Baseball Writers Association of America, which was completed before the playoffs.
Sale received 26 of the 30 first-place votes in the National League. Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Zack Wheeler took second place with the remaining four.
Pittsburgh Pirates' hard-throwing right-hander Paul Skeens finished third in the National League Rookie of the Year award just two days later.
Kansas City starting pitcher Seth Lugo (16-9, 3.00 ERA) was next to Skubal, and Cleveland closer Emmanuel Clase (47 saves) was third.
The last time the National League pitcher won the Triple Crown was in 2011, and it was the first time a pitcher in both leagues accomplished the feat.
That year, Kershaw won the first of his three Cy Young Awards with the Los Angeles Dodgers, while 24-game winner Justin Verlander took home AL honors with Detroit.
Thanks to Sale and Skubal this season, there were 25 times a pitcher led the league in wins, strikeouts and ERA among qualifiers. The Cy Young Award followed every time.
Sale, who had battled injuries since helping Boston win the 2018 World Series, was with the Braves until he was scratched by a back injury in the final game of the regular season, which they had to win to advance to the playoffs. There were no major problems in the debut match.
He was then removed from the roster due to a loss to San Diego in the Wild Card Series.
Atlanta acquired Sale in a trade last December, where he started just 31 games for the Red Sox from 2021 to 2023. He missed the 2020 season and most of 2021 due to Tommy John surgery.
He was limited to starting just two games in 2022 due to a broken rib and a broken left little finger. He broke his right wrist while riding his bike in August 2023, ending his final season in Boston.
Sale was named the National League Player of the Year at Major League Baseball's All-MLB Awards Ceremony last week.
This is the third time Sale has finished in the top three in Cy Young Award voting. In 2017, after his first season in Boston, Sale finished runner-up in the AL behind 2014 Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber, who finished third with the Chicago White Sox.
Sale won his eighth Cy Young Award with the Braves organization. Most of those came from the 1990s, when Greg Maddux won three straight championships with Atlanta from 1993-95 after winning in 1992 with the Chicago Cubs. Tom Glavine won twice (1991 and 1998) and John Smoltz was the 1996 winner. Warren Spahn was the Braves' first player when they played in Milwaukee in 1957.
Detroit currently has six Cy Young Awards. Denny McClain won back-to-back championships in 1968 and 1969, and relief pitcher Willie Hernandez won in 1984.
Verlander won the Cy Young Award with the Tigers two years before Max Scherzer won it in 2013.
Skubal made his major league debut in 2020, two years after being drafted in the ninth round by the Tigers.
In an unforgettable 2024 regular season full of dominant performances, Skubal pitched at least six innings in 25 of his 31 starts.
He went 6-0 starting the first nine games and finished the season the same way — 6-0 starting the final nine games during the Tigers' surprising playoff run. It was a loss.
He made his playoff debut with 17 straight scoreless innings until he returned five points, including a grand slam by Cleveland's Lane Thomas, in the decisive Game 5 of the AL District Series.
This 7-3 loss ended the Tigers' season.
Skeens, 22, became the fifth rookie to finish in the top three in Cy Young Award voting.
The only other player to win both awards in the same year was Fernando Valenzuela, who played for the National League Dodgers in 1981.
Clase pitched 74 1/3 innings in 74 games with a 0.61 ERA and was the first player to finish in Cy Young voting since San Diego closer Trevor Hoffman finished second in the National League Award in 2006. He became the first relief pitcher to rank in the top three.
