Casting an evaluative glance back 91 seasons, the choice for the AL’s starting pitcher in the 1934 All-Star Game appears as easy and devoid of controversy as any. 25-year-old Lefty Gomez entered the pause in regular season action pacing the circuit outright with 14 wins and a 2.03 ERA while matching the best tally for strikeouts, with 79. The title billing for the Yankees’ southpaw gave Gomez a chance to test his stuff against eight future Hall of Famers in the NL’s starting lineup and an opportunity to see how his toolkit measured against the Senior Circuit’s own dazzling lefty starter, Carl Hubbell.
Numerically and ranked, the options for the AL’s starting pitcher in 2025 brought forth a much different landscape, for there was no single individual who had distanced himself à la Gomez in ’34; instead, the league’s leaderboard, in one way, felt as if a heap of Gomezes had emerged – southpaws are having a moment in the younger league. Focusing on the Triple Crown categories at the end of this season’s first half, four left-handers occupied top-10 spots in all three; two others could claim placement in the top-10 in two of the three categories. A left-hander was at the very top in all three columns. Let’s look at these six, in terms of their positioning among their peers in their league.
| Pitcher | AL Rank in ERA | AL Rank in Wins | AL Rank in Strikeouts |
| Kris Bubic | 6 | T-16 | T-9 |
| Garrett Crochet | 1 | T-2 | 1 |
| Max Fried | 5 | 1 | T-9 |
| Carlos Rodón | 11 | T-2 | 4 |
| Tarik Skubal | 2 | T-2 | 2 |
| Framber Valdez | 10 | T-2 | 5 |
The four most preeminent hurlers in the table – Crochet, Fried, Skubal and Valdez – can claim at least 10 wins, an ERA below 3.00 and at least 100 strikeouts in the first half. Before 2025, the AL had never seen as many as four left-handers meet these requirements at the All-Star break (1969 came close, with three hitting the marks and a fourth falling a single K away from joining the trio). Sure, the numbers derive from the standards of this season, but the numbers – and how the numbers stack against the competition – is what we’ll remember and what we’ll celebrate. And, as we took a breath before the regular season resumed, the work being forged by these leading portsiding blacksmiths was something to behold and consider.
As it turned out, the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner, Skubal, got the nod for the AL’s start in this year’s Midsummer Classic. The 28-year-old, coming off the league’s first Triple Crown by a left-hander since 2006 when Johan Santana rose above all of the rest, has positioned himself to do the almost unimaginable – don this Crown in back-to-back seasons. It’s happened only four times, the names almost bouncing off the page (or screen) with a vibrancy reserved for only the most honored and revered. Right-hander Pete Alexander did it during the latter gasps of the Deadball Era in the NL and then found companionship in Lefty Grove, the southpaw accomplishing the feat in the AL in the early 1930s. The mid-1960s saw left-hander Sandy Koufax do the work in the NL and then righty Roger Clemens brought these things to a close with his efforts in the AL near the end of the 20th century. Can Skubal expand the membership to five?
At the break, Skubal was just about neck-and-neck with Crochet, the 26-old-ace of the Red Sox. This two-time All-Star just edged Skubal in ERA, 2.227 vs. 2.231, and had the advantage in strikeouts, 160 to 153. With their 10 wins one victory behind Fried’s 11, there is every reason to cast the eyes over the next dozen or so starts for each and imagine a Triple Crown race coming down to the last week in September. Skubal has been in this spot before; Crochet has emerged as a viable option to select as “best in (AL) show”; Fried and Valdez have some significant work to do in certain areas to make up some ground, but they can be seen easily in the rearview mirror.
Aside from the Triple Crown numbers, Skubal entered the break ahead of the entire pack when it came to bWAR, WHIP, walks per nine, K’s per nine and K:BB ratio. Crochet claimed the league’s best ERA+, his 185 showing brighter than Skubal’s 181. This last category can open a path toward looking backward, for it eliminates – because of its focus on league context – the distinct and enormous changes in starting pitchers’ strikeout numbers and wins tallies.
Since the AL’s inaugural season in 1901, there have been 21 lefty qualifiers in the league to finish a season with an ERA+ of at least 180, a series starting chronologically with Detroit’s Ed Siever in 1902 and as of this moment, concluding with Dallas Keuchel, who posted a 224 in the 60-game, 2020 season for the White Sox. Every decade but the 1920s and 1980s has at least one pinnacle-r, and, as it plays out, only one season witnessed a pair of duelers climbing so high. It was 1971, when AL MVP and Cy Young Award winner Vida Blue rocketed the league and burst into the culture’s consciousness to the resounding chorus of 24 wins, a 1.82 ERA and 301 strikeouts. Mickey Lolich and that lefty’s 308 strikeouts and 25 wins outpaced Blue’s efforts, but Lolich couldn’t keep pace with Blue’s ERA+ (a 124 compared to Oakland’s southpaw’s 183) or the best finisher in that category, Wilbur Wood and that left-hander’s 189. Peering at the 1971 AL pitching leaderboards, seeing this trio along with other left-handers like Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar (a pair of 20-game winners for the Orioles) and one sees and feels a preceding call that is echoing in 2025.
A season’s narrative establishes a foundation before any official pitch is delivered. Skubal was the preseason favorite to repeat as the AL Cy Young winner, followed by Crochet and then, after accommodating a couple of righties, Fried. The games in March, April, May, June and the first part of July have allowed us to watch the realization of such a race and have lifted this story of the league’s southpaws cordoning off an immense parcel of real estate to the very top of what has entranced.
Back in 1934, Gomez supported his stellar first half (again, 14 wins, a 2.03 ERA, 79 K’s) with a second set that played out as a rousing encore: 12 wins, a 2.68 ERA, 79 more punch-outs. The sum numbers were unmatched and so Gomez became the fifth southpaw to win an AL or NL Triple Crown. Since then, there’s been 11 more (including Gomez again in 1937). It just seems appropriate that in this year of the lefty starter in the AL, the pursuit for a 12th will be a multi-thrower race.
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.