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Rangers in prime position to finally secure this prized accolade in 2025

As a franchise, the team hasn't had a single Cy Young winner. These 3 pitchers can change that piece of history this season if they can hold on to what makes them special.
ByStephen Perez|
Texas Rangers v New York Yankees
Texas Rangers v New York Yankees | Dustin Satloff/GettyImages

For a franchise with names like Nolan Ryan, Kenny Rogers, Cole Hamels, Yu Darvish and Nathan Eovaldi; one monumental accolade has passed the Texas Rangers by year after year.

Entering the 2025 season, the Rangers remain one of just three Major League Baseball teams that have yet to have one of their pitchers win a Cy Young Award. That's right, in the organization's 64 years, not a single pitcher has been crowned the best pitcher of a season.

But eventually those records get broken. Or at least you hope so. For Rangers' fans this year seems as good as any with the sparkling performances from Nathan Eovaldi, Jacob deGrom and Tyler Mahle to start the season.

As a group, the three right-handers have appeared in 31 games and as a group all three have ERA's in the top 10 league-wide.

Here's a breakdown of the 3 Rangers' starters vying for a Cy Young this season

Jacob deGrom

It feels good to finally see deGrom back to his old self, not only for the league but for the first time in a Texas Rangers uniform. The best part about it is that he continues to get stronger and stronger as the season progresses.

Before the season began, deGrom was adament about easing himself into pitching this season. One of those metrics was finding ways to get hitters out without overloading the radar gun. In spring training, he told reporters that he wanted to live in the mid-90s with his fastball, focus on making those effective rather than hitting triple-digits and risk overworking his arm.

He did begin that way this season and it went solid but it did get him into a bit of a trouble to start. But as the season has progressed, I guess he's felt better as he's been hitting 98-100 mph on a consistent basis. To add to that, his last two starts have been his deepest starts in years, pitching into the 8th inning against Houston and throwing over 100 pitches on Wednesday against the Yankees.

On the season, deGrom has the 10th best ERA in the league at 2.33 and in his last seven starts he's thrown 43.1 innings with 49 strikeouts to only 8 walks and 8 earned runs. Not only is deGrom out to prove to himself he can still pitch at a high-level for a full season, his 3rd Cy Young Award would give him pretty good standing on his post-baseball future in Cooperstown.

Nathan Eovaldi

His season thus far is the exact reason the Rangers made it one of their top priorities to re-sign the right-hander this offseason. In 11 games, Eovaldi is one of the best pitchers in the game but struggles due to his offense's inability to score runs.

I know the league doesn't put too much focus into the win-loss record anymore so his losses due to the offense's lack of run support shouldn't hurt him. With that in mind, let's talk about what makes him the Rangers top candidate to win the award.

With just a 1.60 ERA and 0.78 WHIP in 67 1/3 innings of work to start the 2025 season, Eovaldi is one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. His ERA is third best in MLB, his WHIP leads all qualified pitchers and he has amassed 71 strikeouts to only 9 walks.

It was almost immediate that Texas knew they made the right decision in bringing him back. In just his third start of the year, he threw a complete game shutout on only 99 pitches in a 1-0 win over the Reds.

Tyler Mahle

Talk about not seeing this one coming but here we are. And we are loving every minute of the performance we are getting from Mahle to start the year.

He looks like an ace in every true sense of the word but for some reason is not get nearly as much attention as he should be getting. He did get beat up a tiny bit on Friday against the White Sox, surrendering three runs in five innings and raising his ERA from a 1.47 to 1.80. But still, a 1.80? That's insane.

After a tough couple of years, bouncing back from Tommy John Surgery and struggling to find his form, it's good to see Mahle getting back to a great form. He's had the ability to be a spectacular pitcher (reference his Twins tenure) and we are finally seeing it in Arlington.

The only unfortunate thing would be that he is sort of in a similar situation of a few former Rangers' pitchers: Mike Minor and Lance Lynn back in 2020, in the midst of fantastic seasons, the team underperformed and were prime Trade Deadline targets. Only question is, will he go the Mike Minor route and get traded midseason or will he make it all the way through the 2025 season with Texas?