Tarik Skubal is the undisputed crown jewel of this year's free-agent class. 

You probably don't need us to tell you why. But let's remind ourselves of Skubal's sheer brilliance anyhow.

Rewind with us first. Skubal returned to the Majors on the other side of Tommy John surgery on July 4, 2023. Since that date, 95 pitchers have thrown at least 350 innings. Choose your preferred ERA estimator tool, and you will find Skubal alone at the top. 

For the past three-and-a-half seasons, Skubal has been the best pitcher in baseball. He has also been the most valuable, pacing the Majors with 21.3 WAR, according to FanGraphs. One more for the road: In that same timeframe, Skubal has the best strikeout-minus-walk rate (26.7%), which is one of the most reliable indicators of a pitcher's true skill.

So, what makes the two-time Cy Young Award winner so elite? As his much-anticipated free agency heats up, let's run through five of the things that Skubal does to separate himself from the rest of his peers.

To be this elite, you need to have nasty stuff, and Skubal's arsenal is wicked. A model like Stuff+ attempts to measure a pitch's "nastiness" based on factors like movement, velocity and release point, grading pitches on an individual level. Last season, Skubal had a raw Stuff+ grade -- so, combining all of his distinct pitches into one composite score -- of 117. Among pitchers to throw at least 140 innings, only Jacob Misiorowski (128) and Chris Sale (118) graded better. 

(For reference: Skubal led all qualified starters with a 123 Stuff+ in '25, while his 112 Stuff+ in '24 trailed only Corbin Burnes.)

All five of Skubal's pitches are above-average offerings on the Stuff+ scale. He has one of the game's best heaters, a lethal two-seamer and a wipeout changeup. We'll dive into more of what makes those individual pitches so good in just a little bit. 

That's a big key here, and it's something that separates a good pitcher from a great one. Skubal has nasty stuff. But his pitches complement each other so well, which makes his entire arsenal play up. 

Skubal is smart and perceptive. He has embraced many of the cutting-edge trends in pitching, from seam-shifted wake to multiple fastball shapes, to elevate his game. This is not unique to him. It does, though, explain how he arrived at this point, where his pitches work in concert almost perfectly. 

Skubal throws his three main pitches -- four-seam fastball, two-seam fastball, changeup -- out of the same window. He releases them with similar spin direction, so the hitter cannot discern what pitch is coming. But at the plate, they're moving differently.

Statcast spin axis data shows us that Skubal's pitches behave one way out of his hand, but by the time they get to the plate, they are moving on a new path. 

Take Skubal's seam-shifted changeup, which tumbles down to his arm-side more than a hitter would expect based on its initial seam orientation. 

"It really looks like my sinker," Skubal told us earlier this season. 

But it doesn't move like one, and that's the whole point here. This an added layer of deception.

The changeup looks like his sinker, which looks like his four-seamer. One fastball cuts to his glove side, and the other moves toward his armside. Pitchers across baseball are throwing multiple fastball shapes because it's nearly impossible for batters to hit. They have similar spin and are thrown at similar speeds, which means they're still on the same movement path when it's time for a hitter to make a decision. Only then do they diverge.

Skubal primarily throws two-seamers to lefties and uses four-seamers to righties, but he sprinkles in both to both-sided hitters. That gives the batter something else to think about. 

So, about those fastballs. 

Last season, Skubal’s average fastball velocity (which includes his four-seamer and two-seamer) was 96.8 mph. The next fastest from a left-handed starting pitcher (min. 500 fastballs thrown) was Phillies All-Star Jesús Luzardo.

Skubal’s velocity was actually down a bit this past season, given that he sat 97.4 mph in 2025. But it ticked back up in the postseason -- notably, a few months removed from midseason elbow surgery -- as his average fastball velo was 97.7 mph in two playoff starts with the Dodgers.  

Skubal has thrown the six fastest pitches by a left-handed starting pitcher in the pitch-tracking era (since 2008), including the postseason. There have only been 11 pitches thrown 101.0+ mph by a left-handed starting pitcher under tracking, and nine belong to Skubal. That includes the 101.1 mph heater he threw to Braves third baseman Austin Riley in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. The velo is still there. 

We mentioned the unique movement profile of Skubal’s changeup earlier. But that’s not the only unique thing about the pitch. 

Skubal doesn’t use a changeup like most pitchers. He threw his changeup 19.4% of the time to left-handed hitters last season. That’s the fourth-highest rate of same-sided changeups among lefties (min. 300 total pitches thrown).

Conventional wisdom holds that same-sided changeups are bad pitches; if a changeup doesn’t move the way a pitcher intends it to, it could float directly into the bat path of a left-handed hitter. A pitch with sharp horizontal movement -- like a sweeper that darts away from the barrel -- is almost always going to grade out better. 

But as Skubal told us in July, although he’s tried to throw a sweeper, he can’t get the movement profile that he wants. So, he’s embraced another modern adage: Use your best pitch more often. It has worked, resoundingly. Lefties hit .207 with a 43.9% swing-and-miss rate against Skubal’s changeup this past season.

What is Skubal’s mentality on the mound? 

“I like to keep baseball pretty simple,” he said. “Trust your stuff. Get ahead. Get guys out. I think I have really good stuff. It’s hard to hit.”

If you’re in the batter’s box, Skubal is going to come after you. No mercy. 

Although his zone rate dipped last season, only four starting pitchers threw a higher percentage of strikes than Skubal did from 2024-25. Last season, his 4.4% walk rate ranked second best among starting pitchers to throw at least 140 innings. 

This has prompted a bit of a cat-and-mouse game between Skubal and the hitter. He is in the zone a ton, so hitters have become quite aggressive. The opposition swung at 53.4% of Skubal’s pitches last season; only Boston’s Payton Tolle induced a higher swing rate among qualifiers. 

Skubal’s stuff is nasty enough -- and his arsenal deceptive enough -- to induce plenty of swings outside the zone, too. These are the best sort of swings a pitcher can induce. Since the start of the 2025 season, Skubal has generated a 35.9% chase rate, the second highest among SP (min. 1,000 out-of-zone pitches), trailing only the Dodgers’ Blake Snell.