The Detroit Tigers have one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball dealing for them every week in Tarik Skubal. He's been one of the best pitchers over the last few years, which included a Cy Young Award in 2024.
This season hasn't been too different from his Cy Young 2024 season. He's been dominant again and has a strong case to be the AL Cy Young in 2025. It'd be the first back-to-back Cy Young winner since Pedro Martinez at the turn of the Century.
But, as Paul Hembekides of ESPN predicts, Skubal would lose the AL Cy Young Award to another dominant lefty starting pitcher, in Boston Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet.
Skubal Predicted to Lose Cy Young to Crochet
"Boston's Garrett Crochet will overtake Detroit's Tarik Skubal and win the AL Cy Young Award," Hembekides predicts.
The Red Sox have seen their new ace dominate this season, and with a month left to go, both he and Skubal are neck and neck in the AL Cy Young race.
This season, across 27 starts, Skubal has a 2.18 ERA, a 12-4 record, 6.2 WAR, 216 strikeouts, a 0.873 WHIP, and a 192 ERA+ in 173 innings pitched.
Across 27 starts, Crochet has a 2.40 ERA, a 14-5 record, 5.5 WAR, 214 strikeouts, a 1.062 WHIP, and a 173 ERA+ in 172.1 innings pitched.
If the season ended at the beginning of September, the AL Cy Young Award would likely go to Skubal. The Tigers' ace has the better ERA, WAR, WHIP, and ERA+ among other statistical categories he's superior in.
But, with a month still to go, Hembekides is predicting that Crochet would overtake Skubal for the AL Cy Young Award. For Crochet to do so, he'd need to have a dominant final month of 2025, in a season where he's pitched more innings than he's ever pitched in a season in his professional career.
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Skubal, meanwhile, would also need to have a poor final month of the year. He'd need to surrender a couple of losses and have a bad September if Crochet were to make up ground and win the AL Cy Young Award.
Voter fatigue shouldn't come into play for the Tigers ace in voting this season, especially if he has the edge in multiple statistics like he does at the time of Hembekides' prediction.
This prediction would be bad news for the Tigers, not just because their ace didn't win the Cy Young Award, but because it'd mean that Skubal struggled down the final stretch of the year.
For now, it doesn't look likely, as Skubal has shown no signs of slowing down, especially with a deep postseason run on the horizon. Skubal is looking to win his second-straight Cy Young Award, a very rare feat in baseball history.
Only Crochet has a chance to stop him, and while Hembekides predicts that Crochet accomplishes that goal, it will not come easily. Skubal is the leader in the clubhouse for the Cy Young Award, and it'll likely stay that way through the end of the year.
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