Detroit Tigers’ Tarik Skubal favorite for 2024 American League Cy Young
“Days of Roar” podcast on Aug. 26, 2024, evaluating Tarik Skubal’s AL Cy Young campaign with Nick Pollack of PitcherList, who explains nasty changeup.
Detroit Tigers left-hander Tarik Skubal has been named a finalist for the 2024 American League Cy Young Award.
Skubal is one of three finalists, as voted on by the Baseball Writers Association of America. The other finalists: Kansas City Royals right-hander Seth Lugo and Cleveland Guardians right-handed reliever Emmanuel Clase.
The winner will be announced at 6 p.m. Nov. 20 on MLB Network.
“He was everything for us,” manager A.J. Hinch said Monday on MLB Network. “When you needed someone to put up a big performance, he was our guy. When you needed someone to punch out somebody to get us out of an inning, he was our guy. When you needed someone to show incredible competitive emotion, he was our guy. We leaned on him for so much leadership and dominant performance, and he delivered in all ways.”
Skubal, who also turns 28 on Nov. 20, posted a 2.39 ERA with 35 walks (4.7% walk rate) and 228 strikeouts (30.3% strikeout rate) across 192 innings in 31 starts in the 2024 season, establishing himself as the best pitcher in baseball. His 5.9 fWAR led AL pitchers.
Of the three finalists, Skubal is the favorite to win the AL Cy Young Award. He ranks second in innings (behind Lugo), second in ERA (behind Clase), first in strikeout rate, second in walk rate (behind Clase) and first in fWAR.
Skubal projects to win the award unanimously, which would mean getting all 30 first-place votes — two from each AL city — from BBWAA members.
“When you put that year together, I can remember the one or two starts where he wasn’t at his best, and that’s it,” Hinch said. “He was the definition of dominant for our team and across the league.”
Skubal made the All-Star Game for the first time in his five-year MLB career, though he didn’t start the Midsummer Classic because AL manager Bruce Bochy picked Baltimore Orioles right-hander Corbin Burnes instead.
He also won the AL Triple Crown of pitching, leading his league in wins (18), ERA (2.39) and strikeouts (228). He was the first pitcher to do so since Shane Bieber in 2020, as well as the first in a 162-game season since Justin Verlander in 2011. Skubal just missed winning the Triple Crown for both leagues, as Atlanta Braves left-hander Chris Sale beat him in ERA with a 2.38 mark.
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“I see two things with Tarik,” Hinch said. “One, I see incredible presence. When he walks out on the mound, the entire team thinks that we’re going to win that day. Secondly, he will dominate the strike zone. We talk about first-pitch strikes, and we talk about getting to two strikes quickly and putting hitters away. He gets soft contact, he gets swing and miss, but he pounds the strike zone. He is unafraid of challenging hitters in the strike zone, and he still wins the battle.”
Skubal’s 2.39 ERA ranked as the second lowest by a Tigers pitcher in the last 50 seasons of the franchise, trailing only Mark Fidrych (2.34 ERA) in 1976.
Four pitchers in Tigers history have won the Cy Young Award, which was first given out in 1956: Denny McLain (1968, 1969), Willie Hernández (1984), Verlander (2011) and Max Scherzer (2013).
The Tigers selected Skubal in the ninth round, at No. 255 overall, in the 2018 MLB draft out of Seattle University. Here are the AL Cy Young winners since Skubal’s draft day: Blake Snell in 2018, Verlander in 2019, Bieber in 2020, Robbie Ray in 2021, Verlander in 2022 and Gerrit Cole in 2023.
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.
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Publish date : 2024-11-11 12:32:00
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