Pitchers winning the MVP is a historic anomaly.
Eleven pitchers have won the MVP since the Cy Young was established in 1956, a rate of roughly one pitcher MVP every 6 seasons. Aside: three of them have been Detroit Tigers, so clearly the deity of baseball awards shenanigans is a Tiger fan at heart, which is certainly a real, mathematical edge for Tarik Skubal. Anyways. The last was Clayton Kershaw in 2014; in the American League, our very own Justin Verlander was the most recent, back in 2011. This is an exceptionally hard feat to accomplish. Case in point, last year’s dominance earned Skubal a mere 7th place.
The main impedance of late has been the shrinking workload of the major league pitcher. Verlander threw an absurd 251.1 innings to win his MVP, leading all of MLB; Kershaw only threw 197 innings, but in 27 starts, for an average of over 7 innings per game. Nobody does that anymore. Before his gem against the White Sox, Skubal had thrown 27 starts, too, and was a full 25 innings behind Kershaw. If he were to complete his remaining 3 starts at the same pace as he has so far, Skubal would end with approximately 192 innings. It’s very hard to value 192 innings more than, say, 700 plate appearances from a catcher pushing 60 HRs, for one hypothetical candidate.
That’s it. Wrap it up, he won’t win. Even though he’s inarguably better than last year, hitters are just too good.
While that may be true, it’s also a bit boring. Skubal has been phenomenal and that deserves attention. Rather than ask “will Tarik Skubal win the MVP?” (spoiler: no), a far more interesting question is “what would it take to change that?”.
The first step is simple: make sure those 190 or so innings are unrivaled. Here are the most important stats, among qualified American League pitchers, in which Skubal is the best: ERA, FIP, fWAR, K%, BB%, WHIP, IP. Everything except Wins, which aren’t all that important for any individual player, he’s the best at. Skubal is peerless among pitchers this year, which is the only path forward to a pitcher winning the MVP. If a pitcher isn’t a lock for the Cy Young, he won’t even sniff MVP votes. Skubal has certainly checked that initial box.
Things get harder, though, when we consider position players. Right now, FanGraphs has Skubal fourth in AL fWAR at 6.5, and projects him to finish fourth, too, which makes sense. Let’s say, for arguments sake, the league leader in fWAR wins MVP automatically, ignoring any narratives like “setting the all-time record for home runs by a catcher” or “leading your team to a shocking comeback in the Wild Card race”, because that isn’t something I can analyze empirically here. Here’s the state of the race.
Player NameCurrent fWARProjected Final fWARAaron Judge7.78.6Cal Raleigh7.48.1Bobby Witt Jr6.97.7Tarik Skubal6.57.2
Needless to say, Skubal has an uphill climb. If he keeps his current pace, and they keep theirs, he never catches up. The math is pretty simple. It would take a fortuitous combination of Skubal dominating and the other three all simultaneously struggling for Skubal to make up ground. Is that level of good fortune even possible?
To answer this, I’m going to examine each players’ worst (or in Skubal’s case, best) stretches of the season. If each player plays perfectly to Skubal’s win condition, can he rise up? Or is the distance too great and the season too far gone?
Player NameCurrent fWARBest Case ScenarioFinal fWARAaron Judge7.7+0.17.8Cal Raleigh7.4+0.27.6Bobby Witt Jr6.9+0.27.1Tarik Skubal6.5+1.47.9
Success! It’s officially, mathematically possible, for Tarik Skubal to win the AL MVP award, if everything goes perfectly according to plan, and voters ignore any key narratives outside a single stat separated by a rounding error while also ignoring the recent trend in not voting for pitchers. All it would take, of course, is Skubal recreating the best stretch of his season, and three other superstars playing at their absolute worst, to close out the season, all at the same time.
In case you were curious, Skubal’s best 3-game stretch was from May 31st to June 6th, a stretch that included him dicing up Cleveland for a 14-K complete game, then two shut-out performances against Kansas City and the Chicago Cubs. Over that period, he threw 23.2 innings with a 0.38 ERA and a 26:0 strikeout:walk ratio. Just do that again, it’s easy, right? He sure makes it look easy.
The main takeaway from all this, honestly, is how freakishly good the best hitters are. I fully expected one, if not all, of those to have a 20-game stretch where they dipped fully into the negative, and they never did. Not even when Aaron Judge posted a .205 BABIP around a UCL injury, thanks to an 18% walk rate. At their worst, with everything working against them, these players are net positives for their team. Baseball is so fluky, and yet, this cohort never let the randomness drag them under. We should all take a moment to appreciate that.
The other? Skubal is amazingly talented. To entertain this conversation with any level of realism is a remarkable feat. Winning MVP might not be possible, but top 5, even top 3, is on the table, both impressive feats in their own right. Shane Bieber’s 4th place finish in a funky 2020 is the most recent pitcher in the top-5, and Kershaw’s victory in 2014 is the most recent top-3. Skubal is reasonably likely to break both of those after leveling up from 2024.
As the Tigers’ stretch run draws to a close and all eyes focus on the playoffs, his ascent from top prospect to Cy Young winner to borderline MVP candidate will be all the more critical. It’s incredibly hard to imagine a run from the Tigers in October that doesn’t feature a series of truly excellent starts from Tarik Skubal.