AL Cy Young power rankings after Tarik Skubal takes Tigers closer to Wild Card glory

Tarik Skubal was at it again on Tuesday, delivering seven more dominant innings (zero runs, two hits, one walk, seven Ks) to help the Cinderella Detroit Tigers to a 2-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rays that puts Detroit temporarily in sole possession of the second AL Wild Card spot. (Imagine reading that sentence to yourself even six weeks ago.)

Not that there was really any doubt at this point, but it was yet another reminder: This is the best pitcher in the American League this season, lowering his league-leading ERA to a microscopic 2.39. With numbers like those, it's no surprise that Skubal has been the betting favorite to take home the AL Cy Young Award for pretty much the whole second half of the season, a status that certainly won't change after Tuesday's performance. But where does the rest of the AL stack up as we enter the season's final week? Let's break down the candidates.

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Honorable mentions: Seth Lugo, Logan Gilbert, Tanner Houck

5. Corbin Burnes, Baltimore Orioles

Burnes is no longer the dominant force he was with the Brewers, and his brutal August helped throw the O's into their second-half slump. The righty has been back on top of his game over the past few weeks though, allowing just three runs over 25 September innings, including 14 frames of shutout ball in two massive wins against the Tigers.

Looking forward, the trend lines for Burnes are a bit worrying. His trademark cutter has more or less disappeared, and his velocity and K rate are both in decline. Overall though, it's tough to quibble with his production this season: fifth in the AL in ERA at 2.95, 10th in WHIP at 1.109, tied for first in quality starts at 22. While the rest of Baltimore's rotation has been a MASH unit, Burnes has for the most part been Mr. Reliable, taking the ball every fifth day and getting his team to the late innings with a chance to win. It's not enough to keep pace with some of the flashier names ahead of him here, but it's nothing to sneeze at either.

4. Framber Valdez, Houston Astros

Valdez looked lost early on this season, holding an ugly 4.34 ERA at the end of May amid a wildly disappointing start for just about every Houston Astros starter not named Ronel Blanco. But once the second half got going, a switch flipped, and the lefty has been lights-out to help push Houston toward yet another AL West title.

Valdez struck out 10 batters three times in a four-start span in July, and he's pitched to a 1.33 ERA with a .138 batting average against since the start of August. The command problems that plagued him early are now a thing of the past, and his curveball has come back with a vengeance, allowing him to rely on something other than his sinker to get outs when the chips are down. Valdez's slow start left him too far behind to catch up in this race, and his contact-oriented style will likely always leave him prone to inconsistency over a full season.

But he's now up to second in the AL in ERA, and his importance to his team is hard to overstate right now. With injuries up and down the rotation and Justin Verlander looking like a shell of himself, the Astros desperately needed this version of Valdez to show up, and he's delivered in a big way.

3. Cole Ragans, Kansas City Royals

Turns out that scorching-hot finish to 2023 was no fluke after all. Ragans threw up a couple clunkers early in the season that have inflated his overall numbers, but for the most part he's looked every bit the part of the ace Kansas City hoped he'd be after the team acquired him from the Texas Rangers in the Aroldis Chapman trade last summer.

And really, with stuff like this, why wouldn't he be? He throws 96 from the left side, and he pairs that heater with four different secondaries that he's willing to throw any time, anywhere in the zone. The only question was whether that would be able to hold up over a full season's workload, but Ragans has been a rock atop the Royals rotation, cracking the 180-inning mark in a hard-luck loss to the Tigers last week in which he allowed just one run over seven innings of work.

Ragans is just ("just") 10th in the AL in ERA, but he's second in FIP and sixth in ERA+, and he leads the league in K/9 at 10.83. The top-line numbers may not look quite as dominant as the lefty has actually been; he's among the toughest pitchers to hit in all of baseball (91st percentile in whiff rate, per Statcast) and with some slightly better run-prevention luck, he'll be challenging for this award for years to come.

2. Emmanuel Clase, Cleveland Guardians

In a year in which no starter has really been able to stake his claim to the No. 2 spot, why not go with the closer having a flat-out historic season? If you're skeptical that any reliever should be in serious consideration for a Cy Young Award, consider that Clase currently ranks fifth in Baseball-Reference's pitcher WAR; even in just 71.1 innings of work, the righty has been about as valuable as anyone.

The numbers still read like something out of a video game: an AL-leading 46 saves with a 0.63 ERA and 0.631 WHIP, the lynchpin of a Guardians bullpen that's helped Cleveland eke out a ton of close games this season.

You could make the argument that his 100-mph cutter is the most unfair pitch in all of baseball, an offering that everyone knows is coming (he throws it nearly 80 percent of the time) but absolutely no one has been able to figure out so far. It's hard to put Clase any higher than this considering the sheer innings advantage that Skubal holds, but he's been critical to his team's success this year, and in this current age of pitcher specialization, having the ultimate bullpen weapon has never been worth more.

1. Tarik Skubal, Detroit Tigers

Was there any doubt? Even before Skubal's latest masterpiece against Tampa (seven innings, two hits, one walk, no runs, seven Ks), the lefty had more or less sewn up his first Cy Young Award. He leads the league in ERA and wins, he's second in K/9 and he's fifth in innings pitched. Even beyond the numbers though, Skubal's value is hard to overstate: Tigers manager A.J. Hinch has been a mad scientist with his pitching staff during Detroit's magical run to a Wild Card spot, mixing and matching and seldom using anyone for more than three or four innings at a time.

The exception to that, and the guy who makes it all work, is Skubal, the pitcher who Hinch can count on for six or seven quality innings (at least) every single time out. Without Skubal anchoring things, Detroit's rotation and bullpen would surely have collapsed by now, and if the Tigers do snap baseball's longest postseason drought, he'll be the No. 1 reason why. He's 95th percentile in walk rate, 91st in K rate, with four pitches that hold a batting average against of .210 or lower.

In a year of maximum pitching chaos, Skubal has been a metronome on the mound, taking the ball every fifth day and dealing no matter what else was going on around him. There are hardly any nits to pick with his game at this point, and he's left no room for argument that he deserves the AL Cy Young.