The two left-handed aces reached this season’s pitching summit in similar ways, leading their respective leagues in wins, ERA and strikeouts to claim the rare pitching Triple Crown. But the Cy Young Awards that came with that clout in results announced by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Wednesday night on MLB Network mean different things to their recipients – the Braves’ Chris Sale and a unanimous winner in the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal.

• Past Cy Young Award winners

For the 35-year-old Sale, who had been close to this honor many times in his accomplished career but had never come out on top, the NL Cy Young is a late-career coronation that will serve as an important piece of a compelling Hall of Fame case. It’s also an exclamation mark on an incredible comeback from the previous four seasons in Boston, where he was limited by various injuries to just 151 innings.

• Pitchers to win Cy in 1st year with a new club

• Complete Awards coverage

“I’m glad it worked out this way,” said Sale, “because I feel like I’m able to appreciate this moment more now. When I was young, it just kind of came to me. I was able to go out there and perform and have success. You kind of figure out what the deal is when you go through a tough time like that. I can’t stress enough about everybody that helped me get here. I’m just very thankful for them.”

For Skubal, who just so happened to turn 28 on Wednesday and earned this biggest of birthday presents, the AL Cy Young is affirmation of an ascent.

• Ranking every Cy Young Award season

“It’s pretty special,” said Skubal, who was flanked by a “Happy Birthday” banner in the living room where he watched the announcement. “All the hard work, all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes, moments like this make it extremely worth it.

This was only the third time that lefties won both Cy Youngs in the same season. It also happened in 2002 (A’s Barry Zito and D-backs’ Randy Johnson) and 1977 (Yankees’ Sparky Lyle and Phillies’ Steve Carlton).

These lefties made it hard on hitters and easy on voters. Though not quite as unusual as the batting Triple Crown, the pitching Triple Crown has only been accomplished 22 times since 1913, when ERA became an official stat. And this was only the fourth time in history – and the first since 2011 (Tigers’ Justin Verlander and Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw) – that both leagues had a pitching Triple Crown winner in the same season.

So Wednesday’s result was widely expected, with only unanimity in question.

Sale did not quite get there. He received 26 first-place votes, with Phillies ace Zack Wheeler claiming the other four to finish in second. Pirates sensation and NL Rookie of the Year Paul Skenes was third.

Skubal achieved a perfect 30-for-30 showing in the balloting to beat out the Royals’ Seth Lugo, who finished second, and Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase, who finished third.

• Here are the Cy Young Award vote totals

Relative to what could reasonably be expected at the start of the season, these finishes were all pleasant surprises for Lugo, who proved to be one of the best signings of last offseason, for Clase, who is the first reliever to finish as a finalist since the Angels’ Francisco Rodriguez in 2008, and for Skenes, who was just the fifth rookie to finish in the top three of a Cy Young vote. As for Wheeler, he finished second for the second time in four years, entrenching his place in the conversation among best arms to have not won this award.

Sale, who had finished in the top six of the AL Cy Young voting every year from 2012 through 2018 with the White Sox and Red Sox, is now removed from such conversation.

After several injury-plagued years in Boston, Sale came to the Braves in a trade last winter and instantly reclaimed his elite status by going 18-3 (setting a career-high in wins) with an MLB-best 2.38 ERA and 174 ERA+ and an NL-best 225 strikeouts in his 177 2/3 innings. He was an All-Star for the eighth time in his career and the first time since 2018 and an important linchpin for an Atlanta rotation that suffered the early season loss of ace Spencer Strider to Tommy John surgery.

“I ran into a buzzsaw over the last handful of years [in Boston],” Sale said. “I just couldn’t stay healthy, couldn’t stay on the field, and you’re not doing anything when you’re not on the field. So I would say the number one thing for me was health, for sure.”

Sale had already been named NL Comeback Player of the Year at the All-MLB Awards Show last week.

Now, with the Cy Young win official, he enters rare territory.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Sale is the first pitcher ever to have five top-five finishes in Cy Young voting prior to winning the award for the first time. He’s also just the sixth pitcher to win the award for the first time after turning 35.

OLDEST FIRST-TIME CY YOUNG WINNERS

(age by last day of regular season)

1959 Early Wynn: 39 years, 266 days
1992 Dennis Eckersley: 38 years, 1 day
2012 R.A. Dickey: 37 years, 340 days
1957 Warren Spahn: 36 years, 159 days
1981 Rollie Fingers: 35 years, 41 days
2024 Chris Sale: 35 years, 184 days

“This is a special night,” Sale said of his win.

There was a certain symmetry to Sale winning the Cy Young opposite a younger lefty who owned the AL Central (and at points beyond) the way Sale once did in the 2010s.

Though unheralded upon his entry into pro ball as a ninth-round pick out of Seattle University in 2018, Skubal had demonstrated his potential in the past. But flexor tendon surgery prematurely ended his 2022 season and delayed the start of his 2023 campaign. Fully healthy in 2024, he made the leap, going 18-4 with an AL-best 2.39 ERA and 170 ERA+ and an MLB-best 228 strikeouts in his 192 innings.

The ERA was the lowest by a qualified Detroit starter since Mark Fidrych’s rookie season of 1976 (2.34). He held opponents to two runs or less in 24 of his 31 starts.

On a Tigers team that traded Jack Flaherty midseason, Skubal was a constant atop a thin rotation. He was the reason manager A.J. Hinch was able to aggressively deploy his bullpen the other days of the week as Detroit surged to an unlikely postseason berth in the second half. And though it didn’t factor into the voting, Skubal became a true household name in October when he shut down the Astros in Game 1 of the AL Wild Card Series, which the Tigers would go on to sweep.

Sale is the Braves’ first Cy Young winner since Tom Glavine in 1998 and the eighth overall, while Skubal is the Tigers’ first winner since Max Scherzer in 2013 and the sixth overall.

“Chris Sale is a guy that, when I was going to college and high school, you idolize left-handed pitchers,” Skubal said. “How he competes and goes about this business, it’s pretty special to watch. I met him at the All-Star Game and that was really, really cool. To be able to share this moment with him is special and something I’ll remember the rest of my life.”

With the Triple Crowns, Sale and Skubal dominated their leagues in ways few before had done. Now they have the sport’s top pitching prize to show for it.