Pirates rookie Paul Skenes became a national sensation this season, making the most high-profile pitching debut since arguably Stephen Strasburg in 2010. The 2023 No. 1 overall pick became the first top-round pick to make the All-Star team the following year and then the first rookie to start the Midsummer Classic since 1995.
After 13 major league starts, the results are meeting or exceeding expectations. As Skenes prepares to face the Diamondbacks on Sunday, he is 6-1 with a 1.90 ERA, 0.91 WHIP and 103 strikeouts against just 16 walks in 80 2/3 innings.
He has Cy Young level rate stats as noted in our rewards watch last week. Only the Braves’ Chris Sale is ahead of Skenes as the betting favorite. Fernando Valenzuela remains the only player to win Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young Award in the same year. Could Skenes make even more history and win the Cy Young in a season that began less than a year after he was drafted?
Workload will be a big part of the discussion, even if Skenes keeps pitching the way he has. Logan Webb leads the National League with 144 1/3 innings. Dylan Cease, another Cy Young candidate, is second at 136 2/3. Five other pitchers have numbers in the 130s. Sale is at 123.
Despite that significant deficit, Skenes is fourth in Baseball Reference’s WAR rating for National League pitchers. I don’t think that could be overcome if the vote were held now. Can he make up enough ground? Let’s dive in.
If Skenes stays on schedule and makes all of his starts for the rest of the season, he’ll end up making 11 more starts (through Saturday, September 28 at Yankee Stadium, by the way). He’s averaging nearly 6 1/3 innings per start right now, and even if he gets more effective and has been allowed to work deeper into games, let’s leave him there. The Pirates will likely limit him to a few opportunities in the future. If we calculate 6 1/3 innings per start over 11 starts, that’s 69 2/3 innings for the rest of the season.
This means he would have 150 1/3 sleeves.
Looking back at the Cy Young winners of the last 15 years, here are the five lowest innings totals (excluding 2020):
- Corbin Burnes, 167 IP, 2021
- Justin Verlander, 175 IP, 2022
- Blake Snell, 180 IP, 2023
- Robbie Ray, 193 1/3 IP, 2021
- Clayton Kershaw, 198 1/3 IP, 2014
Every other Cy Young winner, outside of the truncated 2020 season, pitched 200+ innings until we went back to a reliever (Éric Gagné in 2003). Before that, the last starting pitcher to win the Cy Young in a non-shortened season, excluding those traded between leagues (Rick Sutcliffe) was… person.
Yes, there have only been five full-season starting pitchers who have won the Cy Young with fewer than 200 innings pitched, and all of those happened between 2014 and 2023.
Skenes will be looking to follow somewhat in Burnes’ footsteps, but he is still about two innings starts short here if he continues on this path.
That means Skenes will have to be significantly better than the rest of the field, right?
If he keeps pitching like he has in recent weeks, it’s reasonable to believe he can take over the WAR leaderboard. He has a 1.90 ERA while Chris Sale is the qualified leader at 2.71. That’s pretty impressive, but he probably won’t win the best pitcher award. A pitcher must work at least one inning per game played to qualify. It would be aggressive of the Pirates to have him play up to 162 innings.
Skenes would lead in WHIP, 0.91 to Sale’s 0.95. He would be neck and neck with Tyler Glasnow and Dylan Cease in strikeout rate. He would be second in strikeout-to-walk ratio behind Shota Imanaga. Again, though, he won’t qualify to officially appear on those rankings. Will that matter to voters? Should it?
He can He moved up the strikeout rankings to 103, while MacKenzie Gore’s 122 put him in 10th place at the moment.
This will be fun to watch. I think, looking at the stats, that Skenes winning would be unprecedented. Voters are human beings and many love a good story, so there is always a chance that could factor in. Plus, Skenes has done unprecedented things before, as mentioned above with the All-Star Game. Knowing that, why should we rule him out from the possibility of accomplishing another unprecedented feat?
It’s a tough battle, but Skenes has a real chance to win the Cy Young.
