Detroit Tigers Ace Embarks on Quest To Repeat As Cy Young Award Winner

Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal cruised to the Cy Young Award in 2024, but history says he'll face an uphill battle to repeat in 2025.

Tigers' pitcher Tarik Skubal throws against Guardians during the second inning at Game 5 of ALDS at Progressive Field in Cleveland, Ohio on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024. | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Detroit Tigers finally returned to relevancy in the national Major League Baseball landscape in 2024, and it was largely powered by the unbridled excellence that ace left-handed starting pitcher Tarik Skubal displayed all year on his way to winning the American League Cy Young award.

There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic that this team, led by manager A.J. Hinch, will find even more success this coming season, and Skubal is certainly one of those reasons.

Fans will get their first look of Skubal this year on Wednesday when he takes the mound for his first appearance in spring training against the Minnesota Twins at 12:05 PM CST.

Spring training performance is, of course, not always correlated to regular season success, but it was predictive for Skubal last year, when he excelled to the tune of a 2.57 ERA and 19 strikeouts in 14 innings pitched.

Hinch and the Tigers will hope to see Skubal start off on the right foot, and a strong 2025 is likely in store, but history says the 28-year-old is facing an uphill battle in terms of his hopes of repeating as the AL's Cy Young winner.

No pitcher has won the award in back-to-back years in the Junior Circuit since Pedro Martinez pulled it off in 1999 and 2000, the latter of which was his iconic 11.7 wins above replacement, 1.74 ERA effort which represented career bests in both metrics.

The return to full health of the league's other dominant starters, namely Gerrit Cole of the New York Yankees, Shane McClanahan of the Tampa Bay Rays and Jacob deGrom of the Texas Rangers, means that the field could be much more crowded this year, even if there is every reason to believe that Skubal is set up for success again.

Nothing about Detroit's ace's metrics from last year suggest that regression is on the way. His FIP and xFIP came in at 2.49 and 2.83 respectively, both reasonably in line with his ERA of 2.39.

Skubal actually has a few areas of improvement available to him when comparing his numbers from last year to those of his injury-plagued, 15-start effort in 2023.

That year, the southpaw struck out more batters per nine innings pitched (11.43 vs. 10.69), induced ground balls at a higher rate (51.6% to 45.7%) and had better luck with fly balls resulting in home runs (6.8% to 8.8%).

If Skubal can bring any of those metrics back to where they were in 2023, it is totally plausible that he could have an even better year this time around, and with Jack Flaherty back in the fold, Casey Mize looking increasingly promising and top prospect Jackson Jobe on the way, it's easy to envision the Tigers having one of the very best rotations in the league.