Pirates’ Skenes wins NL Cy Young in 2nd MLB season

Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes capped his historic sophomore season by winning the 2025 NL Cy Young Award.

Skenes was the unanimous victor over Cristopher Sánchez and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. He’s the 16th NL pitcher to win the award unanimously. Sánchez received all 30 second-place votes.

Skenes joins Dwight Gooden and Fernando Valenzuela as the only pitchers to win both Rookie of the Year and a Cy Young in each of their first two seasons. Gooden won NL Rookie of the Year in 1984 and the NL Cy Young in 1985, while Valenzuela won both awards in 1981.

The 23-year-old is just the third Pirates pitcher to win a Cy Young, joining Vernon Law in 1960 and Doug Drabek in 1990.

At 10-10, Skenes is also the first starting pitcher to ever win the award with a won-loss record of .500 or worse. His 10 wins equal the record for fewest victories by a Cy Young-winning starter set by Jacob deGrom in 2018.

The won-loss record clearly meant nothing to voters, as Skenes rose above his 91-loss Pirates team to dominate hitters in both leagues. He posted an MLB-best 1.97 ERA, 217 ERA+, and 2.36 FIP, along with 216 strikeouts and an NL-low 0.95 WHIP over 32 starts. He allowed just 11 home runs in 187 2/3 innings, helping produce an MLB-best 0.5 HR/9 rate.

Skenes also ranked top-10 in the NL in K/9 (10.4), BB/9 (2.0), strikeout-to-walk ratio (5.14).

San Francisco’s Logan Webb and Milwaukee’s Freddy Peralta finished in fourth and fifth place, respectively. Nick Pivetta, Jesús Luzardo, Andrew Abbott, and Zack Wheeler also received down-ballot support.

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