After one of the more dominant games in baseball history on Sunday, let’s look at the adjustments he’s made this year.
One would think improving on a Cy Young caliber season would be nearly impossible. Detroit Tigers ’ ace Tarik Skubal is arguably making it happen. Instead of resting and simply trying to repeat his outstanding 2024 campaign, Skubal has continued to fine tune his game and add wrinkles to keep hitters off balance this season.
Skubal finished the 2024 season with a 2.39 ERA and a 2.49 FIP across 192 regular season innings. He then made it 211 innings in total by throwing 19 more frames in the postseason with a 2.37 ERA and a 2.38 FIP. His ERA this year is 2.49 with a truly outrageous 1.97 FIP across 11 starts and 68 2⁄3 innings of work.
His 30.3 percent strikeout rate has leveled up to 33.8 percent in 2025. His 4.6 percent walk rate last year has been trimmed to an even, and ridiculous, 3.0 percent so far this year. He’s absolutely pounding the strike zone with a 57.8 percent zone rate, compared to 56.6 percent last year, and hitters still rarely are able to do much against him.
There are some quick answers as to how he’s managed to improve on greatness. He’s averaging 97.7 mph with his fourseamer after averaging 96.8 mph last year. His sinker velocities are basically the same as the fourseamer, but he’s made a little adjustment by throwing a few more sinkers this year, particularly to left-handed hitters. More importantly, Skubal is throwing 32.2 percent changeups as compared to 26.9 percent last year. Using the best changeup in the game more often is probably the simplest single answer to his improvements.
One of the other notable changes has been dialing in the movement of his fourseam and sinking fastballs just a little more to accentuate how he uses the two fastball types. Against right-handed hitters, Skubal uses about 34 percent fourseamers and 19 percent sinkers. Against lefties, he’s actually using a lower percentage of sinkers than he did last year when he was close to 55 percent sinkers. Now it’s down to 40 percent, with his fourseam usage up from around 9 percent to 18 percent. Still, it’s mainly sinkers to lefties, fourseamers to right-handed hitters.
He uses the sinker more against lefties to run the ball in on their hands, fourseamers to right-handed hitters to likewise get inside against them. In both cases, he’s using the fastball type that moves toward the hitter most rather than tailing back over the plate.
To help with this, Skubal has trimmed his fourseamer’s horizontal movement from an average of 6.5 inches of induced horizontal break last year, down to 4.2 inches this season. In the process, he’s getting 1.4 inches more of vertical movement, up to 17.6 inches of induced vertical break on the fourseamer. When he’s throwing it gloveside, or inside to right-handers, there’s even less horizontal movement, and it’s practically a perfectly straight heater with above average ride. It’s really, really hard to get your hands in and barrel that pitch up, particularly with as much velocity and deception as Skubal has at his disposal.
So those right-handers are seeing a pitch pretty close to a true cut fastball coming inside on their hands at an average of 97.7 mph. He’ll use the fourseamer away to lefties, where he can throw it just outside the zone. Left-handed hitters, having been jammed repeatedly by sinkers that tail armside into them, then see a fourseamer away and it’s easy to assume it’s going to tail back into the zone like the sinker. It just doesn’t. Instead they get a riding fastball that flies almost straight and it’s hard to barrel that up. Instead it’s a lot of fouls or weak contact off the end of the bat.
Using these two fastball types allows Skubal to attack inside on hitters to both sides of the plate, and while he might miss over the middle, his pitches almost never “run” back toward the middle of the strike zone. The only thing he throws that stays over the middle of the plate much is the changeup, and that pitch is going to drop like a stone as it nears the hitting zone, and Skubal has shown some feel for getting a little more cut or run on that pitch depending on which side the hitter is one. And of course, when you’re geared up for high 90’s cheddar, staying back on the changeup is extremely difficult.
You can see his pitch usage against right-handers, and then left-handers below.
All of these adjustments have helped Skubal build on his first AL Cy Young award campaign as he aims to take the game’s highest award for pitchers for a second straight season. No one has done that in the American League since Pedro Martinez managed the feat in 1999-2000. Roger Clemens did it in 1997-1998, and then won it again in 2001.
Of course the gold standard remains Randy Johnson’s insane four straight NL Cy Young awards from 1999-2022, and Greg Maddux’s four straight from 1992-1995. The most recent back-to-back winner was Jacob deGrom, who managed the feat with the New York Mets in 2018-2019. Max Scherzer’s CY Young’s in 2016-2017 for the Washington Nationals , and Clayton Kershaw’s 2013-2014 run of Cy Young awards illustrate that a true ace of aces can distinguish themselves this way.
For at least this year and next, Detroit Tigers fans can enjoy having the best pitcher in baseball. Paul Skenes may have a little something to say about that description, but it’s certainly holding true again in 2025. Hopefully the Tigers will do what it takes in trade and in free agency this offseason to build a winner around him before the unfortunate day comes where they’ll likely part ways following the 2026 season.