Twenty-three-year-old Paul Skenes on Wednesday night capped his blistering rise to stardom by capturing the National League (NL) Cy Young Award.
The Pittsburgh Pirates ace was a unanimous choice by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, with the honor coming minutes after Tarik Skubal won baseball’s premier pitching prize in the American League for the second straight year as the anchor of the Detroit Tigers.
As gratified as they are by the recognition, both said they are eager for their respective teams to get in on the act next year.
Photo: AP
However, 28-year-old Skubal is entering his final year of club control, and while he would like to stay in Detroit beyond next season, he is well aware the Tigers could trade him as a business decision, considering the hefty raise the left-hander figures to command should he hit the open market as a free agent.
It is much the same for Skenes, who remains under team control for the rest of the decade, but found himself pushing back against a report that he told teammates he is eager to move on.
“I don’t know where that came from,” Skenes said. “The goal is to win and the goal is to win in Pittsburgh.”
The Pirates finished last in the NL Central this year, well off the pace of front-running Milwaukee Brewers.
The first pitcher since Dwight Gooden with the New York Mets in the mid-1980s to win Rookie of the Year one season and a Cy Young Award the next remains optimistic Pittsburgh is closer to contending than most think.
“The way that fans see us outside of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is not supposed to win,” Skenes said. “There are 29 fan bases that expect us to lose. I want to be a part of the 26 guys that change that.”
Skenes — selected first overall by the Pirates in the 2023 amateur draft after a standout career at the US Air Force Academy and Louisiana State University — did his part this year, leading the majors in ERA (1.97), while striking out 216 batters in 187-1/3 innings during his first full season in the big leagues.
Yet even with his brilliance, Skenes needed a little late help from Pittsburgh’s woeful offense to avoid becoming the first Cy Young-winning starting pitcher to finish with a losing record. Skenes won three of his final four decisions to finish 10-10.
That so-so win/loss mark did not stop the towering 1.98m right-hander from placing atop all 30 ballots. Philadelphia Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sanchez received every second-place vote, and World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Los Angeles Dodgers finished third.
Skubal is the 12th hurler to win baseball’s top pitching honor in consecutive years, joining a group that includes Hall of Famers Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez, who was the last American League pitcher to go back-to-back, for the Boston Red SoX in 1999 and 2000.
“I think a lot of it is not being complacent with who I am today,” Skubal said. “I still think there’s more to tap into. I don’t think this is the finished version of myself.”
Wilyer Abreu watched the ball leave the park and tossed his bat high in the air. His Venezuela teammates streamed out of the dugout in celebration. The comeback was on and the win over the reigning World Baseball Classic (WBC) champion Japan was within reach. Japan, their 11-game WBC winning streak on the line, held a 5-4 lead in the sixth inning of Saturday’s thrilling quarter-final matchup when Abreu put his team ahead with the biggest swing of the game: a three-run shot off Hiromi Itoh that sent the loanDepot Park crowd into a passionate roar and helped seize Venezuela’s 8-5
A BREATHLESS BATTLE: France clinched the championship in a vicious back-and-forth match with England, denying Ireland the title by just a few points France won back-to-back Six Nations titles after beating England 48-46 on a last-second penalty-kick by Thomas Ramos in a thriller for the ages on Saturday. England scored their seventh try in the 77th minute and converted for 46-45. If the score held for a few more minutes, Ireland would have been crowned the champion. But France pressed yet again with 14 men, lost possession, regained it, and earned two simultaneous penalties after the fulltime siren. Captain Antoine Dupont debated with referee Nika Amashukeli where the penalty spots were. Ramos, who did not miss a goal-kick all night, finally lined up his seventh
Home runs are greeted with a celebratory shot of espresso and the donning of an Armani jacket. Victories are marked with bottles of red wine while the soaring voice of opera singer Andrea Bocelli echoes through the locker room. Welcome to baseball, Italian-style. Written off as 80-1 underdogs before the World Baseball Classic started, Italy’s fairytale tournament has carried them all the way to today’s (Taipei time) semi-finals in Miami against Venezuela. On Saturday, Italy — who scored a stunning upset of a star-studded US lineup during the pool phase — kept their unbeaten campaign alive with a nail-biting 8-6
Kimi Antonelli became Formula 1’s second-youngest race winner with a composed drive to victory for Mercedes in an eventful Chinese Grand Prix yesterday. The 19-year-old Italian was the youngest pole position starter and briefly lost the lead to Lewis Hamilton of Ferrari at the start, but retook it soon after and was in control after that. “We did it! We did it!” Antonelli shouted to his team on the radio amid laughs and whoops. It was another 1-2 finish for Mercedes to start the season as Antonelli’s teammate George Russell came through a battle with both Ferraris to finish second. Lewis Hamilton was
RSS