Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes was voted the unanimous winner of the 2025 National League Cy Young Award, finishing ahead of Philadelphia Phillies southpaw Cristopher Sánchez and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Skenes received all 30 first-place votes and garnered 210 overall points. Sánchez finished with 30 votes for second place and 120 total points.
Yamamoto finished in a distant third place for Cy Young Award voting by accumulating 72 points. Yamamoto received 16 votes for third place, 11 for fourth place and two for fifth place.
Skenes has now won a second Baseball Writers’ Association of America Award in just his second professional season, after being named 2024 NL Rookie of the Year. Skenes is just the third pitcher in MLB history to win Rookie of the Year and a Cy Young Award within his first two seasons, joining Dwight Gooden and Fernando Valenzuela.
Skenes finished with the best ERA in the Majors at 1.97, posting a sub-2.00 mark for the second consecutive year. His 217 ERA+ and 2.36 FIP were also the best marks among all pitchers. Additionally, the right-hander finished top-five in strikeouts and WHIP.
Yamamoto enjoyed an excellent sophomore season of his own in 2025, as he went 12-8 with a 2.49 ERA, 2.94 FIP and 0.99 WHIP over 30 starts. Yamamoto led MLB in batting average against, with opponents hitting .183 against him this season. He was second in the NL and fourth overall in ERA. Yamamoto’s ERA+ (167) was fifth in MLB as well.
While Yamamoto missed out on the Cy Young, a World Series MVP Award and second championship are certainly strong consolation prizes.
The Dodgers’ right-hander had a performance for the ages, putting forth a 1.45 ERA in 37.1 innings this postseason. His World Series performance was dominant in every sense of the word, as Yamamoto allowed just two runs with a 0.68 WHIP and 15 strikeouts against two walks in 17.2 innings across three appearances (two starts).
Yamamoto’s 2.2 scoreless frames out of the bullpen in winner-take-all Game 7 just one day after throwing six innings was by far the most impressive, with manager Dave Roberts comparing it to Walker Buehler’s bullpen performance against the New York Yankees in the 2024 World Series.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto among Dodgers nominees for All-MLB Team
Yamamoto is among the seven Los Angeles Dodgers who were named as finalists for the 2025 All-MLB Team.
He is joined by Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy, Mookie Betts and Will Smith among the list of 115 players.
The All-MLB Teams will be unveiled Thursday afternoon.
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