Pittsburgh Pirates’ flamethrower Paul Skenes and Detroit Tigers’ ace Tarik Skubal were named Cy Young Award winners for the National League and the American League, respectively, after stellar pitching performances in the 2025 Major League Baseball season.
Skenes and Skubal were named this year’s best pitchers on Wednesday after receiving the most votes from various baseball writers who cover the MLB this past season.
Paul Skenes adds NL Cy Young Award to Rookie of the Year accolade
Twenty-three-year-old Paul Skenes has added the NL version of the Cy Young Award after the panel of 30 Baseball Writers’ Association of America placed him as the top pitcher for the NL over Cristopher Sanchez of the Philadelphia Phillies and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Sanchez received all 30 second-place votes for the NL Cy Young race.
Skenes, who earned the Rookie of the Year award last season, finished 10-10 during the regular season with an earned run average of 1.97.
He recorded 216 strikeouts for the Pirates, allowing just 11 home runs.
He became the third pitcher to win Rookie of the Year and a Cy Young within the first two seasons of their MLB careers.
The others were Fernando Valenzuela – who won both in 1981 – and Dwight Gooden in 1984 and 1985.
Despite being in a sub-500 team that finished last in the NL Central in 2025, the LSU standout – who is the boyfriend of American influencer, former artistic gymnast and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, Olivia “Livvy” Dunne – 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.”
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Tarik Skubal makes it back-to-back
Detroit Tigers superstar pitcher Tarik Skubal proved that his AL Cy Young Award win last year was no fluke, duplicating Pedro Martinez’s feat in 2000 of winning his second consecutive AL Cy Young Award.
The southpaw hurler received 26 of 30 first-place votes after posting a 2.21 ERA and striking out 241 batters.
He failed to win the AL crown in wins (New York Yankees’ Max Fried won 19 games) but he has impacted every Detroit regular season game and finished with a 13-6 record.
The Heyward, California, native was one of five AL pitchers to throw a shutout this season, a complete-game two-hitter against the Cleveland Guardians that featured 13 strikeouts without a walk.
His 94th and final pitch of that game was a 102.6-mile-per-hour (165.118-kilometer-per-hour) fastball for a strikeout – the hardest pitch of his career.
Despite winning the award, Skubal spoke more of the Tigers and expressed pride at how they competed this past season.
The Tigers tumbled out of first place in the AL Central division due to a September slump. Despite this, they punched their ticket to the playoffs and beat the Cleveland Guardians in the wild card round before falling to the Seattle Mariners in the AL division series.
The other four AL first-place votes went to runner-up Garrett Crochet of the Boston Red Sox. Hunter Brown of the Houston Astros came in third.
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SportJustSport writers