Let me preface this entire line of thinking with a simple statement: Paul Skenes is going to win the Cy Young award. No train of thought, no twisting of data, no warping of whatever number you want to put
out there is going to get voters to sway from that position.
It’s not even a wrong decision. Skenes has been everything and more since his debut last season, giving Pirates fans at least a glimmer of hope every fifth day that they’ll see something worth cheering about. He’s dominated the competition almost since he first toed the rubber in 2024 and has continued right through the end of this season. Skenes is going to win the award and may even do so unanimously.
That’s where my issue is.
Why is Skenes being thought of as a unanimous pick to take the top pitching award in the league?
The only other real candidate to overtake Skenes for the top spot is Cristopher Sanchez. These two pitchers have been the best two pitchers from the jump this season. Zack Wheeler was also in the conversation prior to his final few starts before being diagnosed with a blood clot in his shoulder and Yoshinobu Yamamoto had his own spectacular moments, but really, this has been a two horse race. Much of what we have as public perception is that the final vote is a foregone conclusion and as I said before, it may very well be. The issue I’m struggling with is the fact that some say it will be unanimous, that every single person voting will be choosing Skenes and if you don’t, you’re a dinosaur living in a bygone era of baseball objectivity. Instead, I’d opine that the discussion between the two starters requires more than a passing thought.
Looking at the two, the numbers are incredibly similar.
Look and lean into the raw numbers and for anything Skenes has, Sanchez is right there, if not slightly ahead. Even the ones where Skenes is ahead, it’s by a whisker or two. Go off of the WAR numbers and Sanchez has Skenes beat in all three of the measurements we have publicly available, one of them by a full win. The difference between the two is small.
The Phillies PR team also seems to think there is a case, giving us some notes on why they believe there should be a closer vote.
Now, of course there is going to be a PR push from the home team to have their representative get more recognition. The information might be a week old and another start was added for both pitchers, but as you can see from the chart above, not a whole lot changed. While there are differences between the two, most of them going the way of Skenes, those differences are not as vast as one may perceive them to be.
It might be an old school line of thinking, but for me at least, there is also something to be said that every game Sanchez has pitched in has been far more important than what Skenes has been subjected to. While the right handed Ace from Pittsburgh has pitched exceptionally, Sanchez has pitched exceptionally while under far more strenuous circumstances, those circumstances heightened by the fact that Wheeler’s injury put the lefty into a far more critical role for a contending team. Enough to sway a voter? Maybe. Enough to maybe look at those numbers in a different way? There’s validity to that.
A unanimous vote would be acknowledging that there was no other pitcher – starter or reliever – that was deserving of being considered higher than Skenes. Watching Cristopher Sanchez all 32 starts of his season, that’s simply not true. Had his name been one that was more well known around the game rather than celebrated here in Philadelphia, his profile would be that much higher and the discussion would be altered. I am under no illusions that enough voters will choose Sanchez to be the top candidate. The award is probably Skenes’ already.
But Sanchez has been outstanding this season and will continue to pitch in October. I’ll take that ten times out of ten.
