Written By | Sports News Agencies
Two sophomores, two leagues, sixty first-place votes and not a single dissent. The 2026 Cy Young Awards belonged to a new generation of aces.
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NEW YORK
There are seasons when the Cy Young debate rages into the winter, when voters split hairs over innings totals and advanced metrics and somebody's ballot inevitably becomes a talk-radio scandal. The 2026 season was not one of those. On Wednesday night, November 11, the Baseball Writers' Association of America announced that the Yankees' Cam Schlittler and the Brewers' Jacob Misiorowski had won the American League and National League Cy Young Awards, and both did it unanimously. All 30 voters in each league placed them first. Each finished with the maximum 210 points.
It was only the third time in the award's history that both leagues produced a unanimous winner in the same year, joining 1968, when Bob Gibson and Denny McLain owned the sport, and 2022, when Justin Verlander and Sandy Alcantara swept their ballots. Roger Clemens, himself a seven-time winner, read out the results.
The Kid Who Took Over the Bronx
Schlittler's rise reads like the kind of story the Yankees used to write only for homegrown legends. A seventh-round pick in the 2022 draft, he began the 2025 season at Double-A Somerset and reached the majors only because injuries had gutted the rotation. He debuted on July 9, 2025, against the Mariners, allowing three earned runs over five and a third innings with seven strikeouts, then finished that first season 4-3 with a 2.96 ERA over 14 starts and struck out 12 in a wild-card win over the Red Sox.
In 2026, with stars including Aaron Judge, Gerrit Cole, Max Fried and Carlos Rodón missing time, the 25-year-old became the steadying force of the franchise. He made 33 starts, went 14-6 and posted a 1.95 ERA across 193 2/3 innings, with 239 strikeouts. That ERA led the American League and is the third-lowest in Yankees history, behind only Spud Chandler's 1.64 in 1943 and Ron Guidry's 1.74 in 1978. He also led the AL in pitching WAR at 6.2 and in opponent on-base percentage at .244, and earned his first All-Star selection.
The BBWAA ballot told the rest. Toronto's Dylan Cease finished a distant second with 110 points, the second time he has been runner-up, after doing so with the White Sox in 2022. Cleveland's Parker Messick (84 points) and Tampa Bay's Drew Rasmussen (72) followed, with Boston's Sonny Gray fifth. It is the seventh Cy Young for a Yankees pitcher and only the third unanimous one, after Guidry in 1978 and Cole in 2023. It is also the 14th unanimous selection in American League history.
"He's been the best pitcher in the league," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said, as quoted by Yahoo Sports. Schlittler, for his part, credited something unglamorous: "The biggest thing was just working out in the weight room," he said, adding, "At the end of the day, the hard work is gonna be the talent." He did all of it on a salary of $801,000, according to Spotrac. He has one pre-arbitration year left, and the conversation about an extension starts now.
Velocity, Dominance and a Parade in Milwaukee
If Schlittler's season was a triumph of steadiness, Misiorowski's was pure spectacle. The 6-foot-7 right-hander, who is 24, debuted in 2025 with 11 straight no-hit innings and a fastball that routinely touched triple digits. This year he turned that raw stuff into the most dominant season in the National League.
He went 16-5 in 30 starts with a 1.80 ERA over 174 2/3 innings, the lowest mark in the majors. He led the NL in ERA, strikeouts (252), WHIP (.802), FIP (2.17) and opponents' batting average (.157). He set a Brewers Opening Day record with 11 strikeouts against the White Sox, went six straight starts in April and May without allowing an extra-base hit, and in June struck out 15 Phillies in his first career shutout, facing the minimum.
Then there was the velocity. On May 8 he threw a 103.6 mph pitch, breaking Jordan Hicks's 2022 record for the fastest pitch by a starter. He threw 107 more pitches at 103.2 mph or harder over the season and topped out at 105.5 mph on June 26. Only two faster pitches have been tracked in the Statcast era, both by reliever Aroldis Chapman.
The voting was never close. Philadelphia's Cristopher Sánchez finished second with 17 second-place votes, Chris Sale collected 11, and the Dodgers' Yoshinobu Yamamoto took the other two. It is the second straight unanimous NL award, following Pittsburgh's Paul Skenes in 2025. "It's an honor to represent my city and my teammates," Misiorowski said.
The timing made it sweeter for Milwaukee. The Brewers won a franchise-record 103 regular-season games and, two weeks ago, their first World Series title. Postseason numbers do not count in Cy Young voting, which closes when the regular season ends, but Misiorowski's 1.89 ERA across four World Series-run starts, including the final game of the postseason, only cemented his status. He joins Rollie Fingers (1981), Pete Vuckovich (1982) and Corbin Burnes (2021) as Milwaukee's Cy Young winners.
A Generational Turn
What makes this year's results feel significant beyond the record books is who won. Both pitchers debuted in 2025, and both claimed the award in their first full major-league season. That puts them in rare company: Skenes did it last year, Tim Lincecum did it in 2008, and in the 1980s Fernando Valenzuela, Dwight Gooden and Bret Saberhagen became instant icons the same way.
Teams are now developing pitchers who arrive ready to dominate immediately rather than apprentice for years, and these two arrived by very different routes to the same summit.
What This Means for You
For fans, this is the most exciting kind of award season: one that introduces stars rather than coronating veterans. Both pitchers are under team control for years, which means Yankees-Brewers storylines, All-Star Game matchups and even a hypothetical World Series meeting could be built around them for the rest of the decade. For fantasy players and collectors, expect early-round draft prices and rookie-card values to reflect a new tier of ace. And for anyone who loves the craft of pitching, both seasons are worth revisiting on video: Schlittler for his relentless efficiency, Misiorowski for numbers on the radar gun that still seem to belong to another sport.
The Bottom Line
Unanimity is rare in baseball, a sport built on argument. That 60 voters across two leagues agreed so completely says less about consensus than about how decisively two young pitchers separated themselves in 2026. The Yankees found an ace in the seventh round. The Brewers found one who throws 105. And baseball found its next great pitching rivalry, one that is just getting started.
