Almost exactly one year ago, 27-year-old Tarik Skubal opened the Tigers’ season with six innings of three-hit, no-run ball. The 1-0 final in Detroit’s favor was, in a way, the initial abracadabra in what turned out to be a magical, fantastical year for both pitcher and team. Now, Skubal – reigning AL Cy Young winner and one of 13 different hurlers to capture an AL Triple Crown – is about to begin his next tour, again honored with Detroit’s Opening Day assignment as the club seeks to build upon its run to the postseason in 2024.
Skubal isn’t the lone reigning Cy Young Award winner and Triple Crowner to be inaugurating his club’s season in 2025. Chris Sale – just a few days shy of his 36th birthday – is slated to make Atlanta’s first pitch. It’ll be the portsider’s sixth Opening Day start, one additional peg in his quadrant on the map of this century’s more distinguished moundsmen.
Another former claimant as his league’s top pitcher – Sandy Alcántara – is scheduled as Miami’s Opening Day starter: one-half of one of the day’s more compelling duels. The Marlins are hosting the Pirates and their dynamic, magnetic, galvanic right-hander, Paul Skenes. The 2024 NL Rookie of the Year (and third-place finisher in Cy Young voting) will be authoring some history of his own when he makes that start (check out Game Notes on Friday to see the details).
Sonny Gray is scheduled to make his fourth career Opening Day start, this time for the Cardinals. In his three previous outings (two with Oakland, one with Cincinnati) he has absorbed a single blemish in the runs column, generating a 0.45 ERA in 20.0 innings. Logan Webb is on tap for his fourth straight Opening Day start with the Giants, a sustained feat that not even the franchise’s Greatest of all the Great could claim (although there are some GIANTS of the Giants who have done so – again, read Game Notes!).
All around the big league diamonds, Opening Days will be producing tingles and tickles, broad smiles and grins evincing a sense of what could be and welcome back. As symbols of this broad excitement and recognition of restarting the cycle, Opening Day starting pitchers possess an outsized piece of the narrative. It’s more than simply seeing a team’s ace initiate a story that’ll unfold over 162 contests; there is – in each – another knot on a connecting string that ties together all that has come before for each individual franchise and stitches together the broader and more comprehensive landscape.
Survey each club’s modern era leader in Opening Day starts on the mound and you’ll revisit inner circle Hall of Famers and franchise icons, era-defining actors that span the deadball era to the present. The 37 men who make up the list have combined for 37 Cy Young Awards. 14 of them have plaques in Cooperstown and another is a cinch to join them once he’s eligible.
1901-2024: Franchise Leaders in Opening Day Starts
| Franchise | Pitcher(s) | Opening Day Starts |
| Twins | Walter Johnson | 14 |
| Phillies | Steve Carlton | 14 |
| Mets | Tom Seaver | 11 |
| Tigers | Jack Morris | 11 |
| Mariners | Félix Hernández | 11 |
| Braves | Warren Spahn | 10 |
| Giants | Juan Marichal | 10 |
| Cardinals | Bob Gibson | 10 |
| Dodgers | Clayton Kershaw | 9 |
| White Sox | Mark Buehrle | 9 |
| Nationals | Steve Rogers | 9 |
| Red Sox | Roger Clemens | 8 |
| Astros | Roy Oswalt | 8 |
| Guardians | Bob Feller | 7 |
| Cubs | Fergie Jenkins | 7 |
| Blue Jays | Roy Halladay | 7 |
| Yankees | Whitey Ford, Mel Stottlemyre, Ron Guidry | 7 |
| Royals | Kevin Appier | 7 |
| Angels | Jered Weaver | 7 |
| Pirates | Bob Friend | 7 |
| Diamondbacks | Randy Johnson | 6 |
| Orioles | Jim Palmer, Mike Mussina | 6 |
| Reds | Mario Soto | 6 |
| Athletics | Dave Stewart | 6 |
| Brewers | Ben Sheets | 6 |
| Rangers | Charlie Hough | 6 |
| Padres | Randy Jones, Eric Show, Jake Peavy | 4 |
| Marlins | Sandy Alcántara | 4 |
| Rays | James Shields, Chris Archer | 4 |
| Rockies | Kyle Freeland, Germán Márquez | 3 |
Within each franchise, the structured lineage offers its own sense of meaningfulness. When Red Sox southpaw Garrett Crochet goes to the hill on Thursday, Cy Young, Smoky Joe Wood, Babe Ruth, Lefty Grove, Luis Tiant, Clemens and Pedro Martínez will be direct forebears, standards to recall and implant. Yusei Kikuchi’s Opening Day line will be placed next to the efforts of Weaver, Nolan Ryan and Shohei Ohtani inside the Angels’ annals. With his fourth straight Opening Day start, Framber Valdez will strengthen his imprint on the story of Houston’s first games, recalling extended year-after-year assignments previously enjoyed by the likes of J.R. Richard, Mike Scott and Oswalt. Clay Holmes’ first-ever assignment in a Mets uniform will instantly link him to Tom Glavine and Jerry Koosman, Dwight Gooden, Jacob deGrom and the man who made more Opening Day starts than any other pitcher in history, Tom Terrific.
Tom Seaver – the name provokes an astonishing tableau of associations. His first Opening Day start came on April 10, 1968 as a 23-year-old Met matched against Giants right-hander Juan Marichal (in that great’s sixth turn as his team’s Game 1 starter); Seaver’s 16th and last arrived 18 years later in a White Sox matchup against Milwaukee’s Teddy Higuera. For 12 straight years, he was a team’s Opening Day starter and went 6-1 during that stretch. In all, seven of Seaver’s 311 career victories came on Opening Day and his clubs emerged on top in 11 of those 16 starts (there’s a reason the Mets own the best Opening Day winning percentage among the current 30 franchises). Beyond Marichal and Higuera, there were five matchups with Steve Carlton and single faceoffs with Mudcat Grant, Steve Blass, Carl Morton, Dock Ellis, Steve Rogers, Ray Burris, J.R. Richard, Vida Blue and Moose Haas. In every one, a pair of tapped aces took the ball to launch a season, an extra bit of pomp and purpose on an extra-special day.
Sale will be gunning for his fourth career Opening Day victory. Gray will be aiming for his third, but will be opposed by Minnesota’s Pablo López, who is not only seeking his third but his third in as many years (if he achieves this, his company is going to be exceptionally special). Toronto’s José Berríos would join some Blue Jays’ royalty if he captures his second Opening Day win in as many years.
All of these appointees and other 2025 Opening Day starters – Zac(k/h)s here and there (Zac Gallen with Arizona, Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler and Zach Eflin by way of Baltimore); Rangers righty Nathan Eovaldi and the Yankees’ Carlos Rodón and the Reds’ Hunter Greene and Kansas City southpaw Cole Ragans; all of the others – they are all connected to Seaver in one way or another, a matter of separative degrees on this extraordinary family tree.
On April 16, 1946, reigning AL Triple Crown winner Hal Newhouser took the hill on Opening Day for the Tigers and spun a six-hitter in a 2-1 win. More than six decades later, Justin Verlander, coming off a Triple Crown, received Detroit’s nod for the Opening Day assignment and twirled eight innings of two-hit, no-run ball in the club’s 3-2 victory. These are the adjacent precedents on hand for Tarik Skubal in 2025, ancillary opportunities to both deepen his stamp on Tigers lore and add a few flourishes to his signature on the long and variegated roll call of all Opening Day starters. In a legion of ways and with a range of significance, all the right and left-handers with the 2025 assignments share this prominence, captaining one day among 162 that shines brighter and with more stamina than most others.
Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.
Roger Schlueter
As Sr. Editorial Director for Major League Baseball Productions from 2004-2015, Roger served as a hub for hundreds of hours of films, series, documentaries and features: as researcher, fact-checker, script doctor, and developer of ideas. The years at MLB Production gave him the ideal platform to pursue what galvanized him the most – the idea that so much of what takes place on the field during the MLB regular and postseason (and is forever beautifully condensed into a box score) has connections to what has come before. Unearthing and celebrating these webs allows baseball to thrive, for the present can come alive and also reignite the past.