Tarik Skubal has won the past two American League Cy Young Awards, and for most of this season, a third seemed like the natural assumption. But after returning from surgery, the gap between Skubal and the rest of the field has disappeared. In fact, there might be a new frontrunner, and that pitcher is New York Yankees' Cam Schlittler.
Skubal's ERA sits at 3.32 right now. Schlittler's sits at 1.62. Neither number is part of a small-sample, as both pitchers are well past 50 innings. And while Skubal's resume still makes him the favorite in many eyes, his last three starts have created a real opening in the race.
The numbers behind Skubal's post-surgery decline
Skubal made his last start before his elbow surgery on April 29 in Atlanta. One week later, on May 6, doctors removed a loose body from his elbow in a procedure he later said had been designed to speed up his return. He didn't pitch again at the big-league level until June 13, an incredible forty-five days after that previous start.
Detroit played 40 games in that window. And in that same stretch, Schlittler made eight full turns through the Yankees' rotation, which is most of the reason he's thrown 100 innings across 17 starts to Skubal's 59 and two-thirds across 10. But the question isn't whether Skubal's stuff has completely returned. It's whether he's pitching well enough to win another Cy Young.
The one trend threatening Skubal's Cy Young bid
Start with the swing-and-miss. Across his three outings since the surgery, Skubal has struck out four, then eight, then nine hitters, climbing every time out. His strikeout rate over those three starts works out to 11.6 per nine innings, actually higher than his 9.4 mark over his seven starts before the injury. Whatever the procedure did to his elbow, it hasn't touched his stuff.
The home runs are the opposite story, and they're getting worse, not better. He allowed two all year across his first seven starts. In his return to major league pitching he gave up one that Daniel Schneemann turned into a two-run shot. In his next outing, he allowed two against the White Sox on June 19, both off changeups, a pitch he hadn't been touched on all season. In his last start, he gave up three more as the Yankees cashed in. Each start has been worse than the last.
His home run rate has gone from 0.4 per nine innings before the surgery to 3.3 per nine since, an eightfold jump. That's the entire ERA problem in one number. The stuff came back, but the command in damage spots hasn't. Even the White Sox start, which he notched eight strikeouts and a Detroit win, still cost him two homers off a pitch nobody had touched all year.
Cam Schlittler has built a stronger Cy Young case
Strip the ERA gap away, and the skills underneath it are remarkably even. Skubal is still elite at avoiding walks, eight in 59 and two-thirds innings, a 3.4 percent rate. Schlittler's strikeout-minus-walk rate matches Skubal's once volume is factored in, both at 24.8 percent. Their WHIPs are nearly identical too, 0.92 to 0.99.
The separation comes down almost entirely to contact quality. Skubal has allowed a home run every seven and a half innings this year. Schlittler has allowed one every sixteen and two-thirds. That gap, not strikeouts, not walks, is what turns a near-identical approach into a 1.70-run difference in ERA.
The starts that built Cam Schlittler's case
All of that is the season in aggregate. If we break the season down game by game, the gap looks even sharper. Schlittler has not had a perfect season. His one real clunker came June 2 against Cleveland. In four and a third innings, he allowed four earned runs, his only Game Score below 48 all year. He answered it by allowing one earned run total over his next two starts, then turned in the best outing of his career June 19 against Cincinnati, six shutout innings and thirteen strikeouts. He's allowed one earned run across his last three turns combined, a 0.50 ERA against Skubal's 4.96 over the same window.
The rest of the field hasn't separated itself either. George Kirby has thrown more innings than any healthy AL arm not named Michael Wacha, who leads the league outright, but neither one touches Schlittler's .542 OPS allowed.
Why the AL Cy Young race is suddenly open
Skubal has the resume that erases doubt most years with back-to-back Cy Youngs built on his knife-edge swing-and-miss, low-walk profile. If the home runs stop following him out of an elbow procedure, this closes by August. But right now, the pitcher with the better ERA, the better FIP, the bigger workload and the more dominant peak start pitches for the Yankees, not the defending champion in Detroit. The strikeouts say Skubal is almost back, but the home run rate says he isn't, and that gap is what's kept this race from being his to lose.
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