Cy Young Award 2026: Cam Schlittler and Jacob Misiorowski Win Unanimously - the Youngest Pair of Winners in 41 Years
The Yankees' 25-year-old and the Brewers' 24-year-old each took all 30 first-place votes on Wednesday night, becoming only the third unanimous pair since 1967 and the youngest winning duo since Gooden and Saberhagen in 1985.
Baseball's pitching future stopped being a projection on Wednesday night. Cam Schlittler of the New York Yankees, 25, and Jacob Misiorowski of the Milwaukee Brewers, 24, won the American League and National League Cy Young Awards in balloting announced November 11, USA TODAY reported - and each of them did it unanimously, collecting all 30 first-place votes and 210 points. They are the youngest pair of Cy Young winners since 1985, when Dwight Gooden, 20, and Bret Saberhagen, 21, took the honors, and only the third pair to win unanimously in the same year since the award split by league in 1967, after Denny McLain and Bob Gibson in 1968 and Justin Verlander and Sandy Alcantara in 2022.
The seasons behind the votes were not close calls. Schlittler led the American League with a 1.95 ERA and a 7.0 pitching WAR, struck out 239 batters in 193 2/3 innings and went 14-6 across 33 starts - a four-year rise from seventh-round pick out of Northeastern, where his fastball barely reached 88 mph, to the seventh Cy Young winner in Yankees history and the club's first since Gerrit Cole in 2023. Toronto's Dylan Cease finished second with 110 points, his second career runner-up finish, and Cleveland rookie Parker Messick was third. Misiorowski's line was louder still: a league-best 1.80 ERA, 252 strikeouts and a 16-5 record for the World Series champion Brewers, with 28 of the 35 hardest pitches thrown in the majors this season - 104 to 105.5 mph - in a year that began less than 18 months after his June 2025 debut. Philadelphia's Cristopher Sanchez edged Atlanta's Chris Sale by a single point, 99 to 98, for second in the National League.
What the two winners share, beyond age, is the modern development path. Both were remade inside their organizations' pitching programs - Schlittler's mechanics and repertoire rebuilt by the Yankees' staff, Misiorowski's projected velocity realized and then exceeded in Milwaukee. "The game's changing. And it's going in the right direction," Schlittler told USA TODAY Sports on the winners' conference call. "Both of us are able to utilize those tools and help ourselves in development in the game, and make quick adjustments. I was just happy to make all my starts and stay healthy all year." Misiorowski put his own rise more simply: "It happened really quick. It's been a crazy year and a half. But it's been fun."
Wednesday's announcement also named the Relievers of the Year - Toronto's Louis Varland in the American League and San Diego's Mason Miller in the National League - and it sets up the last and biggest night of awards week: the Most Valuable Player winners are announced Thursday. For Houston readers, the local note is an honest absence: no Astro was among the finalists in either league this year, a year after the club's pitching carried it through the summer - the standard Schlittler and Misiorowski just set is the one the rest of the league, Houston included, now measures itself against.
