Tarik Skubal unanimously wins 2024 AL Cy Young award

Tarik Skubal unanimously wins 2024 AL Cy Young award

Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Tarik Skubal capped off his dominant season by winning the 2024 American League Cy Young award, MLB announced Wednesday.

Skubal unanimously took home the award over Kansas City’s Seth Lugo and Cleveland closer Emmanuel Clase, who finished second and third in voting, respectively.

Skubal took home the American League Triple Crown–leading in wins, ERA and strikeouts–in 2024. He became the first AL pitcher to take home the triple crown over a full 162-game season since Justin Verlander did so in 2011; ironically enough, Verlander was also with Detroit, earning 24 wins with a 2.40 ERA and 250 strikeouts. Cleveland’s Shane Bieber did so in a COVID-shortened 2020 season, which was minimized to 60 games.

Skubal, sporting a 2.39 ERA across 31 starts and 192 innings, struck out an MLB-most 228 batters with a 30.3 strikeout rate, the second-highest of his career. He also led the American League in ERA+ (170) and FIP (2.50), illustrating how dominant he was.

The Tigers were baseball’s hottest team down the stretch, winning 30 of their final 43 games that propelled them into a Wild Card spot. Skubal was as dependable as anyone could ask for down that stretch, pitching to a 1.85 ERA (1.98 FIP) with a .517 OPS allowed and 57 strikeouts across 48.2 innings. He was a horse throughout the regular season leading into the playoffs, going 17 consecutive innings without allowing an earned run.

This season marked the deepest the 28-year-old’s gone in his career, so I’m interested to see if he will be able to keep pace next year and beyond. Pitchers have been dropping like flies because of how taxing pitching is on the elbow, so let’s hope that one of the game’s best young arms doesn’t fall victim to that anytime soon.

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