A year after being named National League Rookie of the Year and finishing third in Cy Young Award voting, Paul Skenes has been recognized as the league's top pitcher. 

Skenes was unanimously selected as this year’s NL Cy Young Award winner, beating out Philadelphia’s Cristopher Sanchez and Los Angeles’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto to join Vern Law (1960) and Doug Drabek (1990) as the only Pirates pitchers to ever win the award. Drabek, now a pitching coach in the Diamondbacks system, announced the award winner on MLB Network: 

Sanchez finished second in voting unanimously and Yamamoto finished third. San Francisco’s Logan Webb was fourth and Milwaukee’s Freddy Peralta was fifth in voting. 

“Winning it is one thing; it being a unanimous decision is another," Skenes said. "It’s pretty special. The Cy Young Award is the Cy Young Award. Every baseball fan knows it. I’ve had a month to think about it now, after the season ended and what it would mean. That’s the answer I’ve come upon, is that it doesn’t change anything about the season that I had, whether I win it or not. It's the same way I thought about the rookie of the year award last year. It’s a tremendous honor, but we play this game because we love the game. We love to pitch and we love to win. To just be in baseball, we are stewards of this game. Cy Young Award or not, it doesn’t change that. I’m so grateful, obviously to win the award, but just to be able to play the game, 162 games, my first full big-league season. I was healthy the whole time. Those are the sweetest parts about it, I think, from this past year.”

Skenes is just the third pitcher in history to win Rookie of the Year and Cy Young within their first two MLB seasons. Fernando Valenzuela won both awards as a rookie in 1981 and Dwight Gooden won Rookie of the Year in 1984 before winning the Cy Young in 1985. Only eight players — Valenzuela, Gooden, Justin Verlander, Jacob DeGrom, Rick Sutcliffe, Tom Seaver, Don Newcombe and now Skenes — have won both awards at any point in their careers. 

Skenes, who finished third in Cy Young voting in 2024 behind Philadelphia's Zack Wheeler and the eventual winner in Atlanta's Chris Sale, followed up his remarkable rookie season with a stellar sophomore season to match. He led Major League Baseball in ERA (1.97), WHIP (0.95), FIP (2.36) and ERA+ (217), and his 7.6 Wins Above Replacement ranked only behind the likes of Aaron Judge, Sanchez and Shohei Ohtani. Skenes ultimately went 10-10 and struck out 216 batters while walking 42 over 187 2/3 innings in 32 starts. He ranked tied for second in strikeouts, fourth in innings pitched and tied for third in quality starts (20) among NL starters. Additionally, his strikeout total served as the highest for a right-handed pitcher in franchise history. 

In winning the award, it was obvious that Skenes' lackluster record didn't make one ounce of a difference. Voters paid more attention to the other metrics that showed why Skenes is one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. 

"Obviously the voting's evolved, not just in this award, but all the awards," Skenes said. "It's gonna continue to evolve. It shows what's valued in this game on an individual level. Whether that's a good thing or not, I'll leave that up to you guys. Clearly, wins and losses are not valued as much as they used to be, and that's our job, to win. It's kind of an interesting thing to think about. The game has evolved in two years since I've been here. I remember sitting in the clubhouse last year and watching Yasmani (Grandal) catch in 2016, and his framing is completely different now than it used to be. Catching has evolved. Pitching has evolved. Hitting has evolved. Voting has evolved. The game's evolved very quickly, and it will continue to do that. I'm curious to see where it goes next."

In finishing with a sub-2.00 ERA, Skenes compiled the second-best single-season mark by a qualified Pirates pitcher since earned runs became an official stat in both leagues in 1913. You have to go all the way back to 1916, during the dead-ball era, to find the one Pirates pitcher with a lower single-season ERA than Skenes: Wilbur Cooper (1.87). Skenes was also the first pitcher in Major League Baseball to finish with a sub-2.00 ERA since Verlander in 2022.

“He’s the best in the world," Spencer Horwitz said of Skenes following his final start in Cincinnati in September.  "If he keeps doing this every year, I think he could have a chance to be one of the best to ever do it." 

Skenes, who is under team control through 2029, will once again head into a season as the Pirates' undisputed ace. Despite the ongoing questions surrounding his future with the franchise, Ben Cherington confirmed Tuesday that this year's Cy Young Award winner isn't going anywhere, at least for the time being. 

"It's always respectful. Teams have to ask the question, right?" Cherington said to reporters during the GM Meetings in Las Vegas. "I suspect that won't end. But the answer has been consistent: Paul Skenes is going to be a Pirate in 2026."

The BBWAA Awards Dinner will take place in New York on Jan. 24.