Inner Half

If you didn’t read my post on Paul Skenes, go check it out. I’ll be rolling these out at similar times.

Tarik Skubal won his second Cy Young Award after an insane 2025. A left-handed pitcher, Skubal’s physical presence and stuff gives hitters little to no chance in a game where success is hard enough to come by. Not only is Skubal getting the results, he’s also such an entertaining watch on the mound, I highly suggest you watch him if you haven’t. 6 years into his career now, Skubal has led the Tigers to the playoffs back-to-back seasons, but he’s the subject of trade rumors. It will be fascinating to see how that storyline plays out if he is dealt to another team. Anyways, let’s get to Skubal’s 2025.

Skubal’s 2025 Numbers

A high-level look at Skubal’s 2025 numbers (via Baseball-Ref):

31 GS, 13-6 W-L, 195.1 IP, 2.21 ERA (187 ERA+), 2.45 FIP, 0.891 WHIP, 241 K (32.2 K%), 33 BB (4.4 BB%)

Skubal led the AL with a 2.21 ERA, and his 187 ERA+ tells us he was 87% better than league average in terms of ERA. He was second only to Paul Skenes, who put up a ridiculous 1.97 ERA (217 ERA+). He also ranked second behind Skenes with a 2.45 FIP, which means he was dominant in terms of controlling the three true outcomes of baseball: strikeouts, walks, and home runs (also HBP, but that’s less cool to say).

He was so good at striking hitters out, while limiting walks, his 27.8 K-BB% (strikeout minus walk percentage) ranked number one in all of baseball. Think about these totals: 241 strikeouts to 33 walks. Insane! Only Cliff Lee (in 2010 and 2012) and Clayton Kershaw (2014) have had better strikeout-to-walk ratios for a lefty in a given year. That low walk total also contributes to his MLB-leading 0.891 WHIP, the 6th-best WHIP from a lefty in MLB history. 

If you haven’t gotten the hint by now, Skubal is historic. This is the second straight season he’s been able to do this, too. Let’s talk a bit about how he gets these results.

Skubal’s Pitch Mix

Skubal throws 5 pitches in total. He leans heavily on the fastball-changeup combo against righties, throwing each about 30% of the time. Against lefties, those pitches fall to about 20% usage, and he instead throws his sinker 42% of the time. He mixes in a slider here and there against both and rarely adds in a curveball.

Let’s start with the fastball: according to Baseball Savant, his four seamer sits around 97.6mph. With 17 inches of “rise”, aka induced vertical break, Skubal’s fastball isn’t among the elite in terms of its illusion to the hitter. Regardless, he managed to hold opposing hitters to a .193 BA against and a .263 wOBA against that fastball, essentially shutting hitters down. 

Playing off that fastball at about 10mph slower (88mph) is Skubal’s changeup. The changeup is the definition of “dominant.” With a run value of +25, Skubal’s changeup was the highest rated pitch in all of baseball. Period. Better than Skenes’ fastball. Better than Sale’s slider. You name a pitch, Skubal’s changeup was better. 

Skubal talked about how his changeup uses the seams of the baseball and physics to trick hitters. If you look at the pitch movement data, the pitch is not breaking at a crazy rate. He plainly tricks hitters. He uses his pitch sequencing to make the most of his pitches. The numbers opposing hitters were able to muster against his change? How does a .154 BA, .227 SLG and .171 wOBA sound? If you don’t know the answer to that question, I’ll answer for you: it’s pretty damn good. Here’s a number that should hammer my point down: 46.8 whiff% on the changeup, which means for the total amount of swings a batter takes at the changeup, they miss almost half the time. Nasty.

Where Skubal has Skenes is that ability to get hitters to swing and miss, especially at pitches outside of the strike zone. Skubal’s 35.1% chase%, meaning his ability to get hitters to swing at pitches outside of the zone, was 97th percentile this season. A lot of those chases came on that changeup, but also the curveball and slider.

Splits

As a lefty, we’d expect Skubal to have more favorable splits against left-handed hitters. His L/R splits are as follows:

Against 149 lefty batters faced, Skubal allowed a .214 BA/.235 OBP/.269 SLG. 

Against 599 righty batters faced, Skubal allowed a .196 BA/.241 OBP/.332 SLG.

Despite opposing teams plugging in right-handed batters to try to get the platoon advantage, it actually provided little to no benefit! Skubal was dominant against either side. That tracks with his career splits, as well.

As we did with Skenes, we’ll track Skubal’s TTO (time-through-order) splits:

1st time through order: 1.79 ERA, .172/.216/.282, .220 wOBA against.

2nd time through order: 1.49 ERA, .198/.239/.305, .240 wOBA against.

3rd time through order: 4.08 ERA, .233/.269/.369, .277 wOBA against.

Similar to Skenes, even on the third run through of the opposing order, Skubal was able to perform really well. We would expect an average pitcher’s ERA to inflate to a much higher number than Skubal’s 4.08 on the 3rd TTO. This shows us that going deep into games was never an issue with him, and he was still able to take care of hitters.

Conclusion & Outlook

Tark Skubal is really, really good. With him and Skenes leading the way in the AL and NL, we’re seeing the prototype for a Cy Young-caliber pitcher in today’s game. Pitchers are becoming athletes. They’re not relying on their arm talent alone anymore, it’s a strong lower half mixed with a killer mentality. 

Skubal’s outlook is an interesting one. He’s entering his last year of arbitration before he becomes an unrestricted free agent next offseason. Because of that, and the price he’ll likely command on the free agent market, the Tigers are rumored to be open to trading him. The return on Skubal could be unprecedented, and there is no shortage of contenders looking for not only a rotation-boost, but a rotation leader and ace. 

While a Skubal trade is a maybe, what’s for certain is that Tarik Skubal has solidified himself as one of the top 2 or 3 pitchers in baseball, and will be making the run for a three-peat of the AL Cy Young next season.