A potential Cy Young showdown? What we learned from Tarik Skubal vs. Ranger Suarez

Philadelphia‘s Ranger Suarez versus Detroit‘s Tarik Skubal might have been one of the most anticipated pitching matchups of the first half of the 2024 baseball season.

You probably didn’t have that one on your bingo card back in March. Entering Tuesday night’s game in Detroit, the two lefties were most likely the leading contenders to win the Cy Young Award if the vote had been held the same day. Suarez was 10-1 with a 1.75 ERA and led the National League in wins and ERA while holding batters to a .191 average and .538 OPS. Skubal was 8-3 with a 2.50 ERA while holding batters to a .207 average and .592 OPS.

Now, saying they might win isn’t quite the same thing as saying they’re favored to win the award at the end of the season. Skubal entered the matchup as the odds-on favorite in the American League at +185, according to ESPN BET, while Suarez was second in the NL behind teammate Zack Wheeler at +325.

The showdown did set up the rare possibility of Cy Young winners starting against each other in the regular season during the same season they won the award. It has happened just one other time, when David Price of the Rays faced R.A. Dickey of the Mets on June 13, 2012. (Obviously, this would have been impossible before interleague play began in 1997, but the odds of such a matchup are slim — albeit a little more likely now that each team will play at least one series against every club in the other league.) It’s also happened four times in World Series history: In 1968, when Bob Gibson faced Denny McLain in Games 1 and 4; and then again in 1969 when Mike Cuellar faced Tom Seaver in Games 1 and 4.

Tuesday’s game almost turned into a great pitcher’s duel — the two cruised through four scoreless innings in about 45 minutes — before the Tigers pulled away for the 4-1 win over the Phillies. So, what exactly did we see from both Cy Young hopefuls?

Let’s start with Skubal.

When fans and analysts talk about pitchers “maxing out” all the time these days, that’s not quite right. Most starting pitchers can crank it up in a crucial moment and that’s what Skubal did to get out of trouble in the second inning, when he struck out Cristian Pache swinging on a 98.2-mph fastball with two outs and runners on second and third. His four-seamer averages a still-blistering 96.7 mph, but he went 98.4 and 98.2 to fan Pache.

Skubal was able to get out of another jam in the next inning. He hit Trea Turner with a pitch with two outs and Bryce Harper followed that up with a double to left-center field, but Riley Greene made a nice play to hold Turner at third. Facing Alec Bohm, the leading RBI guy in the NL, Skubal started off with a changeup for a called strike and then threw three sinkers in a row. Bohm, perhaps looking for that four-seamer up in the zone, grounded out softly to second.

Skubal dominated after that, allowing just one infield single over his final four innings, finishing with seven scoreless innings and seven strikeouts. At just 91 pitches, Detroit manager A.J. Hinch probably could have let Skubal go another inning, but he appears to be on a strict 100-pitch limit (Hinch hasn’t let him go beyond that yet). Skubal certainly looked like a Cy Young favorite: His arsenal is ridiculous. He throws from a high slot, touches 98 mph, throws a sinker to change the eye line of hitters, throws a changeup (he threw it 29 times Tuesday), has a slider that looks like it’s going to break the kneecaps of right-handed hitters and then mixes in an occasional knuckle-curve, which feels unfair.

Plus, he works fast — he has the 19th fastest pitch tempo among starters. He’s not giving hitters much time to think about which unhittable pitch is coming next. Among left-handed starters, maybe only Blake Snell, the 2023 NL Cy Young winner, can match Skubal in terms of pure stuff, but Skubal has much better control. (Garrett Crochet and Cole Ragans would be up there, too.)

None of this is necessarily all that surprising: Once he recovered from arm surgery in 2022, Skubal dominated in the second half of last season with a 2.80 ERA over 15 starts. The only question regarding the Cy Young race will be whether he can hold up for 180 innings or so, as his career high is 149 innings back in 2021.

Now to Suarez, who has been one of the biggest surprises of the season.

He’s the antithesis of Skubal, relying on a 91-mph sinker and changing speeds and location. It’s art over power for Suarez, and he deserved better in this game. The Tigers scored four runs off him in the fifth, but the inning opened up when Turner booted a grounder going to his right with runners at first and second and no outs. It was ruled a base hit but should have been an error. A run then scored on a fielder’s choice and two more on a soft single up the middle with the infield drawn in before Greene tripled to score the fourth run. If Turner makes an out there, it’s possible Suarez puts up a zero in the inning.

(As an aside: Turner is not a good defensive shortstop. Edmundo Sosa filled in for Turner when he was injured and had a range factor of 4.00 plays made per nine innings compared to Turner’s 3.18. That’s a big difference — and we saw the same thing last season, albeit in a very small sample size. It’s unlikely the Phillies would do this given Turner’s contract, but if they’re really looking to upgrade center field, they could move Turner there — where he played some as a rookie back in 2016 — and keep Sosa, who has hit well, at shortstop.)

Anyway, it was a bit of a tough-luck outing for Suarez, and he wasn’t too happy when Phillies manager Rob Thomson took him out after six innings. Can he keep it going?

I wouldn’t project a 2.01 ERA the rest of the way, of course, but Suarez has increased his strikeout rate this year — 99 in 98⅓ innings — and hasn’t simply been a guy who’s been hit-lucky. He gets a ton of grounders; in this game, they just found holes. He’s healthy after battling some forearm tightness last year and we’ve seen him deliver in the postseason the past two years for the Phillies (1.62 ERA across 33 innings). It seems like the focused October version of Suarez is now showing up in the regular season. In this era, it’s sometimes hard to believe in a guy who doesn’t throw a blazing fastball, but I’m buying Suarez. I think he’ll be in that Cy Young race deep into the season.

Fun game to watch: 2 hours, 4 minutes. And if both guys go on to win Cy Young Awards, put it down as a fun bit of historic trivia as well.