Chris Sale of the Atlanta Braves and Tarik Skubal of the Detroit Tigers culminated dominant seasons by winning the Cy Young Awards of their respective leagues, as announced Wednesday night by Major League Baseball.
Both left-handers won the pitching Triple Crown, with Sale leading the National League in wins, strikeouts and earned-run average, and Skubal — who was voted for the award unanimously — repeating the feat in the American League.
It is the first Cy Young Award for each.
Sale took the honors over fellow National League finalists Zack Wheeler of the Philadelphia Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates rookie Paul Skenes. Sale received 26 first-place votes and four for second for 198 total points in voting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
“This wasn’t an easy way to get to winning this trophy for the first time,” Sale said, per MLB.com. “As soon as it happened, I’m thinking about people and teammates and coaches and family. It’s special to me because of all the hard work that other people put in to get me here.”
Wheeler was second with 130 points (four firsts, 25 seconds, one fourth) and Skenes, the NL Rookie of the Year, was third with 53 (one second, 13 thirds, three fourths). Dylan Cease of the Padres (45), Shota Imanaga of the Cubs (38) were also among the top five vote-getters.
Sale’s teammate, right-hander Reynaldo Lopez, was one of three NL pitchers who received a single fifth-place vote.
Skubal, with all 30 first-place votes for 210 points, bested American League finalists Seth Lugo of the Kansas City Royals (93) and Cleveland Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase (66).
“It’s special,” Skubal said. “All the hard work, all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes, moments like this make it extremely worth it.”
The Royals’ Cole Ragans (48), the Orioles’ Corbin Burnes (47), the Mariners’ Logan Gilbert (25), the Astros’ Framber Valdez (17), the Rangers’ Kirby Yates (two), the Astros’ Yusei Kikuchi (one) and the Guardians’ Cade Smith (one) rounded out the voting.
Sale, 35, had been in the Cy Young conversation multiple times, the runner-up in 2017 and finishing in the top six in voting for seven consecutive seasons from 2012-18.
The award is the crowning achievement in the comeback for Sale, who missed all of the 2020 season following Tommy John surgery and was limited to just 11 combined starts in 2021 and 2022 due to injury. After a 6-5 season with a 4.30 ERA with the Boston Red Sox in 2023, he was traded to the Braves last Dec. 30 along with cash for infielder Vaughn Grissom.
In his first season in Atlanta, Sale finished 18-3 with a 2.38 ERA. Over 29 starts and 177 2/3 innings, he struck out 225 batters and walked 39, giving up just nine home runs. He was named the NL Comeback Player of the Year last week.
“My goal at the beginning of this year was just to be healthy,” Sale said. “Getting greedy and thinking of things like this would have been maybe a little over my skis. I was coming to a new team that made a trade for me, when I’m sure there were a lot of people that kind of gave that trade the side-eye when it first happened. … To say I’d be sitting here right now would be crazy. I just wanted to be able to do my job, really.”
Sale’s season ended in disappointment, however, as a back ailment kept him from pitching in the postseason.
In his career with the Chicago White Sox (2010-16), Red Sox (2017-23) and Braves, Sale has a 138-83 record with a 3.04 ERA and 2,414 strikeouts over 372 appearances (292 starts).
As for Skubal, he won the award on his 28th birthday. A ninth-round draft pick by the Tigers in 2018, he made his debut in 2020. In 31 starts this season, he finished 18-4 with a 2.39 ERA, striking out 228 and walking 35 over 192 innings.
Skubal was 6-2 with a 1.85 ERA over his last eight starts as Detroit surged from eight games below .500 in mid-August into the playoffs for the first time since 2014.
He beat the Astros in Game 1 of the AL wild-card series and finished the postseason 1-1 with a 2.37 ERA in three starts.
“It was a ton of fun to be part of,” Skubal said. “The last two months of our season and even the postseason was very special. The memories and the experience will obviously help our club going forward, and I’m glad we got to experience it as a team and as a young team.”
Over 106 career regular-season appearances (103 starts), Skubal is 41-31 with a 3.37 ERA. He has 648 strikeouts in 571 1/3 innings.
Sale became the first Atlanta pitcher to win the award since Tom Glavine won for the second time in 1998, which capped a dominant decade by Braves pitchers when Glavine, Greg Maddux and John Smoltz combined for six Cy Youngs in eight seasons.
Skubal is the third Tigers pitcher in the 2000s to take home the prize, following Justin Verlander (2011) and Max Scherzer (2013).
This season was the fourth in major league history that both leagues had a Triple Crown winner in the same year. The last time that happened was 2011, when Verlander of the Tigers and Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers accomplished the feat.
–Field Level Media
