Triple Crown Winners and Cy Young Hopefuls Headline This Year’s Crop of Opening Day Starters

All hail Chris Sale and Tarik Skubal! Last year, both southpaws dominated opposing hitters, winning the Pitching Triple Crown by leading their respective leagues in wins, ERA, and strikeouts. They also topped their circuits in both the FanGraphs and Baseball Reference flavors of WAR, and took home their first Cy Young Awards. It was just the second time that AL and NL hurlers won the Pitching Triple Crown in the same year, after Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw in 2011. Like that pair in 2012, they’re both slated to usher in the 2025 season by taking the ball on Opening Day, with Sale facing the Padres in San Diego at 4:10 p.m. ET on Thursday and Skubal going up against the defending champion Dodgers (who already had their Opening Day on March 18 in Tokyo against the Cubs) in Los Angeles at 7:10 p.m. ET.

This will be the sixth Opening Day start for Sale, who turns 36 on March 30, but his first since 2019, as a variety of injuries limited him to just 31 starts from ’20–23. After being traded from the Red Sox to the Braves in December 2023, he went 18-3 with a 2.38 ERA and 225 strikeouts as well as 6.4 fWAR and 6.2 bWAR, and reinvigorated his long-dormant Hall of Fame case along the way. The only down note to his season was that he didn’t pitch after September 19 due to back spasms and was left off the roster for the Wild Card Series (also against San Diego, coincidentally), which the Padres swept. As for the 28-year-old Skubal, he went 18-4 with a 2.39 ERA and 228 strikeouts as well as 5.9 fWAR and 6.4 bWAR. His breakout helped the Tigers reach the postseason for the first time since 2014, which they did thanks to an improbable 24-10 sprint to the finish; according to our Playoff Odds, at 62-66 on August 22, they had just a 0.8% chance of making it.

Setting the historic nature of the dual Triple Crowns and the rest of those story lines aside, having both reigning Cy Young winners starting on Opening Day marks a return to normalcy. For as commonplace as such assignments may seem, last year neither of the 2023 winners, Gerrit Cole and Blake Snell, were available, with the former sidelined by nerve inflammation and edema in his elbow and the latter not built up yet after signing with the Giants on March 19. As I noted at the time, the absence of both Cy Young winners from the slate was more or less a once-every-couple-decades occurrence. Prior to 2024, the last time neither reigning Cy Young winner started on Opening Day was in ’05, when both Astros right-hander Roger Clemens and Twins lefty Johan Santana yielded to longer-tenured teammates. Before that, one had to flip the calendar back to 1982, when Dodgers southpaw Fernando Valenzuela held out in a contract dispute, and Brewers righty Rollie Fingers was a reliever.

Even with the two 2024 honorees lined up, this year’s Opening Day slate isn’t exactly loaded with former Cy Young winners. Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara, who will be making his first regular season start since his October 2023 Tommy John surgery, is the only one besides Sale and Skubal. While Snell will start for the Dodgers — his official debut for the team after signing a five-year, $182-million deal in December — this is merely their home opener; aptly, three-time Eji Samawura Award winner Yoshinobu Yamamoto got the call for the Tokyo Series Opening Day opposite Shota Imanaga of the Cubs. By comparison, as recently as 2023, eight former Cy Young winners took the ball on Opening Day, and the last time both winners from the previous year started the first game was in ’22:

I mention all of this not because it’s freighted with great meaning, but because Opening Day slates are an interesting snapshot in time, a sort of “Here’s who came to this year’s party” group photo. The table above tracks a significant changing of the guard, with future Hall of Famers Greinke, Kershaw, and Scherzer aging out of Opening Day assignments as much due to injuries as declining performance. Kershaw is second among active starters with nine such starts, trailing Verlander (12), but the 2021 one was his last; he’s currently on the 60-day injured list, rehabbing from surgeries on his left knee and left foot. Greinke and Scherzer have each made seven Opening Day starts but may not do so again; the former is all but officially retired, having not pitched last year or gone to camp with a team this year despite being just 21 strikeouts short of 3,000. Verlander is absent from the table above because his last Opening Day start was in 2020 – his only outing of the shortened season, it turned out, as he needed Tommy John surgery.

From among the other pitchers in the above table, the oft-injured Kluber has since retired, while a handful of the other Cy Young winners are only now emerging from the shadow of Tommy John surgeries, reminders of the high cost of throwing a ball hard repeatedly. In addition to Alcantara’s return, Bieber is currently rehabbing from April 2024 surgery, so his streak of five straight Opening Day starts, the longest active one, will come to an end. Both deGrom (now a Ranger) and Ray (now a Giant) are starting their first full seasons since their surgeries. If you’re wondering about Cole, he’s not listed above because all five of his Opening Day starts between 2017 and ’23 were made before he brought home the award.

On that note, several of this year’s Opening Day starters received strong support for winning the Cy Young in our annual staff predictions poll, most notably the Pirates’ Paul Skenes, whom 13 of our 26 staffers picked to win the NL award. At this time last year, Skenes was pitching for Triple-A Indianapolis, but upon reaching the majors on May 11, he reeled off a brilliant 23-start run with a 1.96 ERA and a 33.1% strikeout rate in 133 innings, earning him NL Rookie of the Year honors and third place in the Cy Young voting. Armed with a new cutter, he’ll square off against Alcantara. Zack Wheeler, last year’s runner-up behind Sale, received the second-most votes of any NL hurler in our staff poll (six). He’s starting for the Phillies against the Nationals and is part of the Opening Day Three-Headed Zack/Zach/Zac Attack Comeback along with Eflin and Gallen. All of them fulfilled the same role last year, though Eflin pitched for the Rays then and is now with the Orioles after being traded ahead of last year’s deadline.

Garrett Crochet, who topped our AL polling with seven votes, is getting his second Opening Day start in a row after changing his Sox from White to Red via a Winter Meetings blockbuster. Purely a reliever during his first three major league seasons — a span that was interrupted by, yup, Tommy John surgery — he was brilliant in his transition to starting last year, an All-Star and one of the few bright spots on a White Sox squad that lost a record 121 games. Though he fell short of qualifying for the ERA title given his 146 innings, he nonetheless tied for third in the AL in WAR (4.7) and ranked fourth in strikeouts (209).

Skubal, Mariners righty Logan Gilbert, and Royals lefty Cole Ragans, who each received four votes, are all starting on Thursday as well. deGrom, who tied them for second in the AL polling, is not on the bump for Opening Day, as the Rangers have ramped him up slowly this spring. Also receiving Cy Young votes in our staff poll and making starts on Opening Day are Giants righty Logan Webb and Astros lefty Framber Valdez. With Bieber on the shelf, those two will share the distinction of the longest active streaks of Opening Day starts, with four.

Here’s a look at the full slate:

Skenes is the most prominent pitcher from among the nine making their first Opening Day starts. That total is down from 15 last year, which I believe is a record given that the previous Wild Card-era high was just eight. The high count was driven in part by a whopping 11 Opening Day starters from 2023 being out of commission a year later, mainly due to injuries. Skenes is by no means the least experienced among this year’s Opening Day starters, a distinction that instead belongs to White Sox righty Sean Burke, who takes the baton from the traded Crochet. The 25-year-old Burke debuted with three innings of relief last September 10 and joined the rotation for three starts thereafter, two of which the White Sox won, no small feat given their epic futility. With his upcoming sixth Opening Day start, Sale rates as the most experienced of this year’s crop, while three other pitchers will be making their fifth, namely Alcantara, José Berríos, and Nathan Eovaldi.

Among the other prominent first-timers, Bibee takes over from Bieber as the Opening Day starter in Cleveland. He just signed a five-year, $48 million extension with the Guardians earlier this week. Gilbert is the only first-timer besides Skenes who receive Cy Young support in our staff poll. Pepiot, who’s part of the lone Friday opener, will be halfway to the total of Opening Day starts of Tyler Glasnow, for whom he was traded in December 2023.

One quirk that stands out when looking at the table above relates to the absence of Cole. Four other members of the 2023 Yankees will be starting: Carlos Rodón, who has the honor for the Yankees; Clay Holmes, who’s moved from closing for the Yankees to starting for the Mets; Michael King, who’s getting the call for the Padres; and Luis Severino, who’s making his debut with the A’s.

Holmes and Severino join Crochet and Angels lefty Yusei Kikuchi as the Opening Day starters who will be debuting with their new teams. Holmes signed a three-year, $38 million deal to switch boroughs and roles, adding a changeup and four-seam fastball to augment the sinker/slider combination that helped him make two AL All-Star teams. After a strong rebound with the Mets following a dismal finale with the Yankees, Severino signed a three-year, $67 million deal with the no-longer-Oakland Athletics, a club record. The A’s, who open in Seattle, will make their Sacramento debut on March 30 against the Cubs; don’t hold your breath waiting for their Las Vegas debut.

As for Kikuchi, whose performance improved substantially after a July 29 trade from the Blue Jays to the Astros, he signed a three-year, $63 million deal with the Angels. He placed 16th on our Top 50 Free Agents list, but he’s the highest-ranked of those free agent pitchers to get an Opening Day assignment. Of the seven pitchers above him, Cole, Bieber, and the Mets’ Sean Manaea are injured, while the others who changed teams (the Diamondbacks’ Burnes, the Dodgers’ Snell, the Yankees’ Max Fried, and the Tigers’ Jack Flaherty) have been slotted to pitch after their longer-tenured teammates.

All told, including Yamamoto, 12 of the top 16 starters according to our Depth Charts projections will start on Opening Day. So while it may not be as rich in Cy Young winners as some previous slates, we’re getting most of the best that the game has to offer. Play ball!

Source