Detroit Tigers left-hander Tarik Skubal and Atlanta Braves lefty Chris Sale were each named the winner of their respective league’s Cy Young Award on Wednesday.

The announcement was hardly a surprise after each ace won their league's pitching triple crown during the 2024 regular season.

This is the first Cy Young for both pitchers.

Skubal, who turned 28 on Wednesday, enjoyed a break-out year in his fourth full MLB season, and was a unanimous winner, receiving all 30 first-place votes in balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. The Kansas City Royals' Seth Lugo finished second and Cleveland Guardians relief pitcher Emmanuel Clase finished third in the balloting, which was completed before the play-offs.

Sale received 26 of 30 first-place votes, while Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Zack Wheeler finished second, ahead of Pittsburgh Pirates righty Paul Skenes, who was selected as the National League Rookie of the Year on Monday.

The 35-year-old Sale has come close to winning the award before, finishing as runner-up to Cleveland's Corey Kluber in 2017, with five other top-five finishes in voting since his first full season in the majors in 2011.

Since the inception of the Cy Young Award in 1956, there have been 16 pitchers to win his league's pitching crown. And now, every one of them has also won that year's Cy Young.

Skubal and Sale each won an MLB-best 18 games, while Skubal led all pitchers with 228 strikeouts – three more than Sale. Sale's ERA of 2.38 was just a tick better than Skubal's 2.39.

Both were dominant down the stretch in leading their teams to the play-offs, with Sale permitting two earned runs or fewer in each of his final 18 regular-season starts, though he was unable to pitch in the season final or the Braves' NL Wild-Card series loss to the San Diego Padres because of a back injury.

Skubal posted a 1.94 ERA in his final nine outings, and then threw 13 shutout innings in his first two play-off starts in helping the Tigers surprisingly reach the American League Division Series. He ended up going 1-1 with a 2.37 ERA in three post-season starts.

Skubal became the fifth Tiger to win the Cy Young trophy – and first since Max Scherzer in 2017 – and Sale is the fifth Brave to earn the award – and first since Hall of Famer Tom Glavine in 1998.

Despite several close calls in Cy Young voting for Sale, he has dealt with injuries for the past five seasons, and was limited to a total of 151 innings over the past three years for the Boston Red Sox.

In his first season with the Braves, however, he threw 177 2/3 innings and was awarded the NL Comeback Player of the Year Award last Thursday.