Reigning AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal didn’t have a great night on Monday. For six innings he was in vintage form, punching out seven Athletics hitters through three innings. A Zack McKinstry error led to a run in the sixth, but Skubal finished the inning with 10 strikeouts and one earned run allowed. The seventh inning was a different story.
A Colby Thomas solo shot, another McKinstry error, a missed scoop by Spencer Torkelson at first, and a Tyler Soderstrom double later and the bases were loaded
with no outs and a run already in. Skubal dialed it up to punch out the next two hitters, but just as he was primed to escape the jam, Shea Langeliers got hold of a sinker and launched a grand slam that ended Skubal’s night and sent the Tigers to defeat.
In the grand scheme of the Tigers’ season, one loss matters little. They hold a 10.5 game lead over second place Kansas City, and 12.5 over the third place Cleveland Guardians. They have 100 percent odds of making the playoffs, and a 99.9 percent chance to win the divisional race, per FanGraphs. There is still a first round bye and home field advantage to play for, and those matter a lot. No doubt manager A.J. Hinch is emphasizing those particularly items to keep a team that has looked like a near lock to win the division for months as motivated and focused as possible. Still, it was one loss.
The real impact is that an already tightening AL Cy Young race just got a little tighter. FanGraphs Cy Young odds still favor Skubal, but we know how the actual voting can go on these things. Just ask Kate Upton. There are now three other American League pitchers making a pretty solid case for themselves, and the final five weeks of the season will decide the matter. Skubal controls his destiny and simply needs to pitch like Skubal the rest of the way, but any more slippage will really open the door to the pack chasing him.
Tarik Skubal: 11-4, 2.28 ERA/2.26 FIP, 166.0 IP, 0.87 WHIP, 6.1 fWAR
Garrett Crochet: 14-5, 2.38 ERA/2.58 FIP, 166.1 IP, 1.06 WHIP, 5.3 fWAR
Hunter Brown: 10-5, 2.36 ERA/2.91 FIP, 149.0 IP, 1.01 WHIP, 4.2 fWAR
Nathan Eovaldi: 11-3, 1.73 ERA/2.78 FIP, 130.0 IP, 0.85 WHIP, 3.8 fWAR
Now, it’s one thing to make statistical arguments. It’s another to foresee the psychology of the BBWAA members who will vote on the sport’s most prestigious award for pitchers. If you can just get in the conversation, as the aforementioned four pitchers have managed, narrative can sometimes take you a long way in voters’ minds.
Right now, Skubal still stands atop the pack. Garrett Crochet has proven to be everything the Boston Red Sox hoped and, to me at least, is the only other reasonable choice right now.
Brown is having a great season, but he doesn’t really stand out above Skubal and Crochet in any meaningful category. Has Brown been absolutely crucial to keeping the Astros in the pole position in the AL West? Definitely, but aces are always crucial to a good team’s success. Without Skubal, the Tigers would probably be locked in a dogfight for the AL Central, and without Crochet, the Red Sox would have been dead and buried by mid-June. Instead they find themselves a game up in the wild card chase, and still five games back and within striking distance of the AL East leading Blue Jays with 30 games left to play. Should the Red Sox manage to steal away the division with a strong final series of starts from Crochet, this probably gets into coin flip territory.
So at this point, Brown is the odd man out among the three clear leaders in the American League. Still he is close enough that a really strong finish, coupled with stumbles by Skubal and Crochet, could open a path to the Cy Young award for the St. Clair Shores native.
As for Eovaldi, the only thing he holds over Skubal is ERA, but he has been on quite a tear until just recently. The perenially injured right-hander for the Rangers missed some time already this year, but a 0.59 ERA across 30 2/3 innings in July vaulted him into the conversation. His strikeout rate is a good but not great 26 percent, and while his 4.2 percent walk rate is outstanding, Skubal’s walk rate is even lower, and he holds a 33.5 percent strikeout rate as well. There just isn’t an important statistical category other than ERA where Eovaldi has any kind of case over the other three starters here.
Is there a slim chance that Eovaldi could pitch his best ball over his last 5-6 starts of the season and work his way more into the statistical conversation? Probably, but he also lacks the secret sauce of a narrative to help carry him. The Rangers are 5.5 games back in the wild card chase with a 66-67 record, and seven games back of the Astros in the AL West. A wild run to the AL West crown, paired with an outstanding final 5-6 starts, could potentially change things but it’s a real longshot for Eovaldi.
Instead, we’re really looking at a race between the two most dominant left-handed pitchers in the game at this point, with Hunter Brown still holding a slim chance to catch them.
Voters will receive and return their ballots in the tight window between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the postseason, to avoid the postseason impacting their decision. In Skubal’s favor are the numbers. In Crochet’s favor is potential east coast bias to the Red Sox, pitcher win total for those still oddly inclined to that, and the fact that Cy Young voters may prefer not to give it to Skubal in back-to-back years unless he’s just far and away superior to Crochet by the numbers at season’s end.
The two have thrown the same amount of innings. They’ve both made 26 starts to this point. They have the same HR/9 at 0.81, and their respective ERA’s are within 0.10 of each other. Skubal has a two percent edge in terms of strikeout percentage, and a signfiicant edge in terms of walks allowed at 3.9 percent to Crochet’s 6.3 percent. It’s very close, but at this point Skubal still has a small edge in every relevant category. If we dig deeper, Crochet has an edge in certain win probability stats like win probability added (WPA) and RE24, but I highly doubt Cy Young voters are going to be deciding things based on stats that are still fairly obscure to most baseball fans.
Ultimately the mission is pretty clear. Tarik Skubal needs to outpitch Garrett Crochet the rest of the way to really assure his position atop the leaderboards. Any slip while Crochet continues to pitch this well could flip the script. If Crochet can catch Skubal in ERA, or at least tighten up a few categories, it’s going to come down to the wire.
The Detroit Tigers have bigger fish to fry than individual awards these days. With one Cy Young under his belt, it doesn’t matter too much if Tarik Skubal wins another one or not. We saw how the Tigers lost their mojo for a while around the All-Star game, and no doubt Skubal is entirely focused on team success and putting together a deep run in October in hopes of winning it all. Still, pride is a good motivator too, and no doubt he’d like to take home the hardware for a second straight seaason. For now, he remains in the driver’s seat, but Garrett Crochet is having a fantastic season as a left-hander pitching in Fenway Park, and the decision may come down to who leaves the best impression in Cy Young voters’ minds over their final handful of starts in the 2025 regular season.
