2025 Cy Young Dark Horse
December 6, 2024
Overview
The 2024 Cy Young awards were recently announced, going to the two Triple Crown winners, Tarik Skubal and Chris Sale. Skubal, while displaying signs of elite stuff, pleasantly surprised many with the absolute dominant display he put on in 2024. Sale fresh off a solid six-year stint in Boston, shocked the league. Having appeared in only 31 games over the last three seasons combined and battling injury after injury, he won his first Cy Young almost unanimously.
I wanted to provide my “non-favored” prediction for the 2025 Cy Young winners in both the NL and AL. We can probably assume the NL will have some clear-cut favorites in Sale, Wheeler, and Skenes. However, I believe the AL might have a little bit more variety, outside of Skubal and maybe Crochet, depending on where he could potentially land this offseason. I decided to pick two pitchers who finished outside of the top three in voting this year.
Cole Ragans: LHP, KC Royals
Taken in the first round in 2016, Ragans debuted with the Rangers in 2022, starting in nine games and finishing 0-3 with a 4.95 ERA, giving up more hits than innings pitched. In 2023, he was transferred to the bullpen, where he continued to struggle, with a 5.92 ERA through 17 appearances. In June of 2023, he was sent to the Royals as a part of the Aroldis Chapman deal. With Kansas City, Ragans was able to find his rhythm, starting 12 games and posting a 2.64 ERA with a 1.07 WHIP to close out the season. Ragans came into 2024 even better. Across 32 starts and 186.1 innings (both ranking in the top 10 in the AL), he posted a 3.14 ERA. His whiff and strikeout rate landed him in the 90th and 88th percentiles, respectively. His 223 strikeouts ranked second in the American League, and 67 walks were the fifth fewest.
He sports a 5 pitch mix but mainly relies on his 4-seam and changeup. The heat maps from the catcher’s perspective highlight how well he can located each pitch. His elite changeup, which drops 6.4 more inches than the average lefty changeup in 2024, is his bread and butter to get swings and misses. With a whiff rate of 47.8% and a putaway percentage of 25.2% (both the best among his pitches), hitters are swinging and missing at his changeups inside the strike zone at an amazing 40.8%. He prefers to throw this pitch to righties more than lefties (28.5% vs 5%) and relies on it when he falls behind right-handed batters. Against lefties, he leans on his slider, throwing 34% compared to just 7.4% to righties. Once he gets ahead of a fellow lefty, he uses his slider 46.5% of the time. The Pitch Movement chart displays the nice separation of movement among his pitches from his 45-degree arm slot. If he continues to progress like he has in just 1 season, Cole Ragans has a good chance to be the 2025 AL Cy Young.
Hunter Greene: RHP, CIN Reds
Hunter Greene took one of the most impressive leaps from 2023 to 2024. The #2 overall pick in 2017, playing in his third big league season, finished eighth in this year’s Cy Young voting. Struggling in his first two years (4.63 ERA, 1.3 WHIP), Greene flashed ace-level stuff in 2024. He finished with a 2.75 ERA and a 1.02 WHIP, with 169 strikeouts, surprising many around the league. Utilizing one of the best fastballs in the game (98th percentile in run value) at 97.6 mph, Greene landed himself in the 81st percentile in both whiff and strikeout rates, the 87th percentile in barrel rate, and the 92nd percentile in hard-hit rate. Greene slightly adjusted his pitch mix over the past year. In 2024, he incorporated a splitter in place of a traditional changeup, throwing it 8.3% of the time compared to 5% previously, adding more vertical depth to complement his power fastball. He also added in a curveball although only throwing it 2% of the time. Although his sider produces the most whiffs, he leans on both his fastball and slider equally to generate strikeouts, with rates of 20.6% and 20.8%, respectively. In 2 strike counts against righties, he goes to the fastball 57% of the time achieving a 28% strikeout rate on his 4-seam against right-handed batters. Although he throws his fastball even more against lefties in 2 strike counts (61%), his slider seems to be more effective in said situation with a 55% strikeout rate. Greene employs an approach popular among flamethrowers: pairing a high vertical fastball at the top of the zone with a low vertical splitter and a swing-and-miss slider. This simple adjustment seems to have aided Greene in going from the 29th and 16th percentiles in barrel and hard-hit rates to one of the league’s best as previously stated. One last extremely positive sign is his improvement throughout the season. After the All-Star break, Greene posted a 1.13 ERA and a 0.75 WHIP, while reducing his walk rate from 9.9% in the first half to 7.7%. Although Greene missed some time in August resulting in only 7 starts in the second half, he remains an exciting young arm to watch.
