Awards Watch: Phenom Paul Skenes and veteran Zack Wheeler locked in amazing duel for NL Cy Young

The All-Star break is in a few days and one of the few remaining decisions to be made for the 2025 Midsummer Classic is the naming of the starting pitchers. Over on the American League side, it should be incredibly easy with Tigers ace and reigning AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal getting the ball. 

In the National League, however, there are two excellent choices and they might be locking horns all season in battle. Pirates youngster Paul Skenes was the NL Rookie of the Year last season and started the All-Star Game. He’d make a fine choice to start again, but there’s heavy competition from one person: veteran workhorse ace Zack Wheeler of the Phillies. 

Obviously, it’s still possible that someone else ends up winning the Cy Young on the NL side this season, but it sure seems like it’ll be one of these two right now. The odds agree. Via BetMGM, here’s the top five right now: 

• Skenes -135
• Wheeler +100
• Logan Webb +2000
• Cristopher Sànchez +2200
• MacKenzie Gore +3500

I believe the two here are neck-and-neck and the only reason Skenes is the favorite here is what is tantamount to a tax on him being the more popular selection among bettors. 

Let’s take a look, enjoying just how close their numbers are right now. 

[fWAR is Fangraphs’ version of WAR while bWAR is Baseball Reference’s version. fWAR uses FIP in its calculations; bWAR uses runs allowed per 9]

Paul Skenes 

Statistics: 4-7, 1.94 ERA, 220 ERA+, 0.92 WHIP, 2.37 FIP, 125 K, 30 BB, 116 IP, 1 CG, 3.9 fWAR, 4.8 bWAR

For the most part, the individual win-loss record of pitchers carrying the day in Cy Young voting has died, but there could still be some vestiges of the mindset that “a pitcher’s job is to win” in the voting body. It’s possible that swings a vote or two toward Wheeler, especially if everything else is relatively equal (and it is right now). 

Something else that could be a factor down the road is Skenes’ workload. Remember, the Pirates were overly, annoyingly slow with Skenes to start last season in Triple-A Indianapolis. He ended up working 27 ⅓ innings there before his promotion and 133 in the majors for the Pirates, which is a total of 160 ⅓. An increase of 15ish or even 20 wouldn’t be outrageous, but it would be surprising if the Pirates went much higher than that — especially given how unlikely they are to be even close to contention in September. 

Skenes is absolutely good enough to post the type of numbers to win Cy Young with 180 innings. Corbin Burnes took NL Cy Young honors in 2021 with 167 innings. Guess who was second that year? It was Wheeler! And he worked 213 ⅓ innings, beating Burnes in bWAR 7.5 to 5.3. 

Can Wheeler overcome this time?

Zack Wheeler

Statistics: 9-3, 2.17 ERA, 196 ERA+, 0.85 WHIP, 2.49 FIP, 148 K, 25 BB, 116 IP, 1 CG, 3.8 fWAR, 4.8 WAR

He’s finished second in Cy Young voting twice and has topped 200 innings twice, both happening in the same two seasons. He looks like he’ll get there for a third time on the innings tally, but Wheeler might join Gerrit Cole (AL, 2023) and Chris Sale (NL, 2024) in finally breaking through to win his first Cy Young as a veteran and previous “always a bridesmaid” type. 

We can’t measure this, obviously, but I think that many voters in all sports can get caught up subconsciously in something like this. If you have this kid in Skenes who will have a bunch more chances to win the Cy Young while Wheeler might — again, he’s 35 years old — be on his last chance, one’s mind could start swaying them to find reasons to vote for Wheeler. 

As things stand right now, Wheeler leads the league in strikeouts, WHIP, strikeout rate and has the lowest rate of hits allowed. Skenes leads in ERA, ERA+ and has the lowest rate of home runs allowed. They are in a virtual tie in the WAR arena, or at least within the margin of error. 

It sure looks like Wheeler is going to have the advantage in innings and — partially as a result of the innings — strikeouts. He’ll have a much better looking win-loss record and he might have the unspoken/subconscious “lifetime achievement award” sway. Right now, Skenes has a decent lead in ERA, but Wheeler has the lead in WHIP (that’s basically just baserunners allowed and that matters a lot). Skenes has all kinds of national star power that extends beyond baseball, but I’m not sure 30 BBWAA voters care much about that. 

I still feel like Wheeler is going to win this thing, but man, it’s going to be a lot of fun to watch the rest of the way. It is, in old-school sports terminology, a barn burner.