There was no sophomore slump for Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes. Instead, the LSU product followed up his 2024 NL Rookie of the Year campaign in by unanimously winning his first NL Cy Young Award in 2025.<\/p>\n
The two-time All-Star beat out the Philadelphia Phillies’ Cristopher S\u00e1nchez and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto for the honor Wednesday after posting an MLB-best 1.97 ERA this season. No other qualifying major-league starting pitcher had gone sub-2.00 since Justin Verlander did it with the Houston Astros in 2022.<\/p>\n
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Although Skenes’ 1.97 ERA was a hundredth of a point higher than his 1.96 ERA from last season, it was the lowest by a Pirates starter with at least 140 innings pitched since 1916, per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette<\/a>. He logged enough innings to become the first qualified pitcher in his age-23 season or younger to notch an ERA that starts with a 1 since Dwight Gooden in 1985, according to MLB.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n The 2023 No. 1 overall pick needed a stellar start the last week of the regular season to accomplish that feat. He delivered one, spinning six scoreless innings and striking out seven batters against the playoff-bound Cincinnati Reds on Sept. 24. The Pirates prevailed in extras, so Skenes didn’t get the win, an all-too-familiar tale, as he finished the year with a 10-10 record that didn’t reflect his excellence.<\/p>\n Run support was hard to come by for Skenes this season, which saw now-former Pirates manager Derek Shelton fired<\/a> after a seven-game skid dropped Pittsburgh’s record to 12-26. Skenes remained a silver lining for a club that finished with a losing record for the seventh season in a row.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Skenes is a cornerstone piece for new manager Don Kelly, who took over for Shelton this spring before earning an extension at the end of September. Pirates general manager Ben Cherington drove that point home in spite of outside noise about the organization potentially trading Skenes in the near future.<\/p>\n “The question gets asked, and it\u2019s always respectful,” Cherington said of fellow teams probing for Skenes’ availability, when at MLB GM meetings in Las Vegas this week, per Front Office Sports<\/a>. “Teams have to ask the question, right? I suspect that won\u2019t end. But the answer\u2019s been consistent.”<\/p>\n