Since June of 1920, there have been 138 pitchers to wend and wield and wind and whiff and wow to the tune and rhythm of at least five starts and five wins with no losses during this first month of summer. Athletics right-hander Slim Harriss was the first to brand his own June magic, going 5-0 with a 2.81 ERA at the very early dawn of the liveball era, in 1921. By ERA, Cliff Lee’s 2011 June claims the bluest ribbon, thanks to his 0.21 (1 ER in 42.0 IP). Tarik Skubal is now part of this collection, and by ERA, just makes it into the top-50: his 1.89 matched with Tom Seaver’s mark from 1968 when the already terrific Tom was, like Skubal in 2025, 5-0. This is just a small corner of Skubal’s masterpiece(?) in the making as he riffs on an encore to his Triple Crown, Cy Young 2024 campaign.
Tarik Skubal twirled seven innings of scoreless ball by allowing one hit, one walk and racking up 13 strikeouts.
~Skubal’s 10th win matched him with Yankees left-hander Max Fried for the AL lead. Skubal also paces the circuit with 138 strikeouts, 11.39 K’s per nine and a 0.835 WHIP and is fifth in the league with a 2.15 ERA. The two lists below use some combination of Skubal’s numbers as a baseline to explore sets of players who have approximated them, from a couple of different perspectives.
Through 85 Team Games, 10+ Wins, 138+ K’s, 2.15 or Lower ERA (1997-2025)
| Player | Season | W | SO | ERA |
| Tarik Skubal | 2025 | 10 | 138 | 2.15 |
| Luis Severino | 2018 | 13 | 138 | 1.98 |
| Max Scherzer | 2017 | 10 | 163 | 1.94 |
| Clayton Kershaw | 2016 | 11 | 145 | 1.79 |
| Randy Johnson | 2000 | 13 | 185 | 1.77 |
| Pedro Martínez | 1999 | 15 | 184 | 2.10 |
| Pedro Martínez | 1997 | 10 | 154 | 1.74 |
| Roger Clemens | 1997 | 13 | 140 | 1.69 |
Before the All-Star Break: 15+ GS, WHIP Below 0.900 and K/9 Above 11.0
2002 Curt Schilling
2017 Max Scherzer
2018 Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, Justin Verlander
2021 Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom, Freddy Peralta
2022 Corbin Burnes, Shane McClanahan
2025 Trik Skubal
~Skubal’s 13 strikeouts in this game matched his season high. He is one of five Tigers lefties to have multiple games in a season with at least this many punchouts. In 1969, Mickey Lolich posted four such games (with a high of 16, twice) and in 1971, he had three. Lolich also had two in 1967, a tally matched by Matthew Boyd in 2019 before Skubal in 2025.
~With this outcome, Skubal improved to 10-0 in his last 15 starts. Tigers history has seen three others author an undefeated streak of at least 15 starts. Bobo Newsom begins, with his 18-game run in 1940 later matched by Max Scherzer in 2013. In 1934, Schoolboy Rowe went 15 straight starts without a loss. A look at the W-L and ERA numbers for each of the four:
Bobo Newsom 13-0, 2.32 ERA during 18-game streak
Max Scherzer 13-0, 3.06 ERA during 18-game streak
Schoolboy Rowe 12-0, 3.16 ERA during 15-game streak
Tarik Skubal 10-0, 1.74 ERA during 15-game streak
~With Skubal and Max Fried tied atop the leaderboard with their 10 victories, this is the first season since 2018 to have a pair of AL southpaws with double-digit wins through 85 team games. That year, it was Toronto’s J.A. Happ and Tampa Bay’s Blake Snell.
Nolan Arenado collected his 1900th hit and later, his 1,901st marked his 400th double. Arenado is one of 81 players to have at least 400 doubles through his age-34 season (the list ranges from Albert Pujols with 561 to Ken Griffey, Jr. and Arenado at 400). Arenado is also one of 178 to have at least 1,900 hits through an age-34 season. In this latter view, Arenado being one of many is significantly slimmed when looking at extra-base hits as a percentage of a total collection of knocks. The current Cardinal is one of 15 – within this 178 – to have at least 41% of his hits go for extra-base hits. There’s Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx from a much earlier era; Willie Mays bridges those immortals to a more present day; and then these fellas from the last few decades appear: Barry Bonds, Jeff Bagwell, Frank Thomas, Sammy Sosa, Griffey, Jr., Juan González, Manny Ramírez, Todd Helton, Álex Rodríguez and Albert Pujols.
Oneil Cruz homered twice and now has 15 homers to go along with his NL-leading 27 steals. He is one of 13 players to get to each of those numbers before the All-Star break, the third in as many seasons (after Ronald Acuña, Jr. in 2023 and Elly De La Cruz last year). Special mention to Bobby Bonds (1969, 1973), César Cedeño (1973, 1974) and Rickey Henderson (1986, 1990) for making multiple appearances.
Aaron Judge homered twice to get to 30 bombs on the year.
~With Judge’s appearance, the count now comes to 45 players who’ve reached 30 homers before an All-Star break. Willie Mays (1954) was the first, with Judge and Cal Raleigh repping for 2025. The full list is made up of 32 different players, with Judge and Mark McGwire the only two to appear four times. McGwire banged to 30 in 1987, 1997, 1998 and 2000; Judge has 2017, 2022 and 2024 as his mates to 2025.
~Judge has 44 career multi-home run games, breaking out of the tie he had with Lou Gehrig for third on the Yankees list. Only Babe Ruth (68) and Mickey Mantle (46) are ahead of him. Overall, Judge’s 44 tie him with Willie McCovey and Mike Schmidt for the 21st most.
Jazz Chisholm, Jr. tripled and homered and now owns a 1.034 OPS at home versus a .536 on the road, giving him an overall mark of .831. This relationship gives the Yankees’ infielder a home tOPS+* of 146. In the Yankee Stadium(s) era, Oscar Gamble’s 1976 season gets top billing for the highest home tOPS+ (minimum 50 games at home), with a 162 (Gamble owned a .992 OPS at home, a .743 overall). If Chisholm’s 146 were set in stone and met the qualification, it would be the fifth highest value.
*Via Baseball Reference: tOPS+ is the OPS for the split relative to the player’s overall OPS, where a number greater than 100 indicates the batter did better than usual in this split.
Ranger Suárez spun seven innings of one-run ball to emerge as the victor in Philadelphia’s 2-1 win over Atlanta. The left-hander has gone at least seven innings and allowed no more than one run in four straight outings, the longest such streak for a Phillies pitcher since Cole Hamels had a five-game stretch in 2014. There are six Phillies hurlers this century to have a streak of at least four appearances, with five of the six being southpaws. In addition to Hamels and Suárez, there’s Randy Wolf (4 in 2002) and Cliff Lee twice (4 in 2009, 5 in 2011). Robert Person – thanks to his four-gamer in 2001 – breaks the monopoly.
Justin Verlander allowed a run in six innings but as has happened in all 13 of his starts this season, the active leader in wins came away without adding a victory to his career tally. The sequence within this affair – Verlander exiting the game in line for the win only to see the Giants bullpen cough up the team’s lead – has occurred four times now, matching Verlander with a number of others for the second most in the Majors (Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler has five of these “wins lost” appearances).
In the Nationals’ win on Sunday, James Wood drew four intentional walks. Since 1955, there are nine examples of a batter receiving four (or more) in a game. The 22-year-old Wood is the first batter since 39/40-year-old Barry Bonds in 2004 (on four different occasions) to have four in a game. In 1990, 35-year-old Andre Dawson had five intentional free passes. The others with four: Roger Maris in 1962 (27 years old), Garry Templeton in 1985 (29) and Manny Ramírez in 2001 (29).
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.