The NFL regular season just came to an end, which means football season is within a month of coming to a close. Before you know it, you’ll be watching home runs and strikeouts again on the diamond, with Spring Training just a few months away at the time of this writing. I know it feels like the Dodgers just won the World Series yesterday, but that was getting close to three months ago, if you can believe that. Time flies, and now we have reached the point where we want to start looking at the MLB futures market for 2025, to see if there is anything we might want to invest in.
One of the most prominent MLB futures is the Cy Young award, which goes to the best pitcher in each league every season. In 2024, Atlanta Braves starter Chris Sale won the National League Cy Young award, while Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal won it in the American League. Taking a look at the early market for 2025, the typical guys are all up there towards the top as favorites, but with some interesting names as well.
In the American League, Skubal once again leads with 4/1 odds to take home the award in back-to-back years. However, Sale is third in the National League with 8/1 odds to repeat as Cy Young winner. There is a new name at the top of the leaderboard, but one that you and everyone else is very familiar with by now.
Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes is the biggest favorite to win a Cy Young in either league, sitting at just 3/1 right now in most places to win his first. As you probably know, Skenes won the National League Rookie of the Year in 2024 for his outstanding performance from the moment he was called up from the minor leagues. He finished with an 11-3 record, an incredible 1.96 ERA and 0.95 WHIP, and perhaps most impressive was his 170 strikeouts in only 23 starts. It was clear from his first pitch that he was going to be a special pitcher.
This does seem like quite the jump, however, for a guy who hasn’t played a full MLB season yet to be the Cy Young favorite in the National League. How many times have we seen a guy have a great rookie season, but then hitters adjust, and it doesn’t go as well the second time around. I’m not saying that is going to happen here, but it is something that you have to think about before investing in a wager. On top of that, it was pretty clear as he went on, his strikeout ability started to wane a bit compared to when he was first brought up. This is fatigue, as he has never been asked to do what he did before in his pitching career.
Now, if the Pirates are even just a tad competent, they will have worked with him all offseason on his conditioning and pitching. We all know that the Pittsburgh track record on that is quite terrible, but that mostly stems from being cheap. Look at former Pirate Gerrit Cole, who went on to have plenty of success despite all the losing around him.
Not only is Skenes the favorite, but he is a pretty large favorite as well, with the closest pitcher to him being Zack Wheeler at 7.5/1 odds to win it for the National League.
The top-5 in National League Cy Young odds are as follows: Paul Skenes +300, Zack Wheeler +750, Chris Sale +800, Blake Snell +1000 and Corbin Burnes +1200.
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