Now, two years after helping the Rangers to the first World Series title in franchise history, Jankowski joins Skip Schumaker’s coaching staff as first-base coach.
Jankowski’s final MLB game came on July 8 of this season with the Mets, concluding an 11-year career with eight teams.
A former first-round pick by the Padres in 2012, Jankowski became known for his defense and baserunning during his big league career.
The Rangers finalized the majority of the 2026 big league coaching staff on Wednesday, including six returnees from Bruce Bochy’s staff.
Luis Urueta (bench coach) and Dave Bush (assistant pitching coach) will return in the same roles, while the other four will move to new roles.
- Corey Ragsdale will move from first-base to third-base coach
- Jordan Tiegs was promoted to lead pitching coach, filling the role vacated by Mike Maddux
- Justin Viele was promoted to lead hitting coach, filling the role vacated by Bret Boone
- Brett Hayes will move from quality control coach to catchers coach, filling the role vacated by Bobby Wilson
Other new additions to the staff include hitting coach Alex Cintrón, quality control coach Rod Barajas and bullpen coach Colby Suggs.
Cintrón will be charged with helping Viele fix a Rangers offense that has regressed over the last two seasons.
Cintrón joins the Rangers after spending nine seasons on the Astros’ coaching staff. He served as a Major League coach (2017), first-base coach (2018) and hitting coach (2019-25).
During his seven-year tenure as Houston’s hitting coach, the Astros led the American League in both OPS (.764) and on-base percentage (.329), also ranking in batting average (2nd, .259), slugging percentage (2nd, .435), runs per game (3rd, 4.90), home runs (3rd, 1,386) and walks (3rd, 3,403).
Barajas, a former Rangers catcher, recently served as assistant coach with the Angels’ Double-A Rocket City affiliate in 2025. From 2023-24, he was the field coordinator in Miami under Schumaker.
Suggs — a Sulphur Springs, Texas native — recently spent four seasons as bullpen coach with the Twins. During his tenure with Minnesota, relievers recorded the fourth-most strikeouts (2,152) and fifth-fewest walks (775) in the American League.
Cy Young winners Skubal, Skenes join exclusive lists among pitching greats
The award call came in as expected, and now two of the absolute best pitchers in the sport find themselves on short and lofty lists.
Surprising no one after wowing everyone, Tigers ace Tarik Skubal was named the American League Cy Young Award winner and Pirates prodigy Paul Skenes the unanimous National League honoree by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in results revealed Wednesday night on MLB Network.
This puts the 28-year-old, left-handed Skubal on the short list of back-to-back Cy Young winners and the 23-year-old, right-handed Skenes on the even shorter list of pitchers to win both the Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young within the first two seasons of their career.
In the AL voting, Skubal (26 first-place votes) finished ahead of fellow finalists Garrett Crochet (four first-place votes), who starred for the Red Sox following an offseason trade from the White Sox, and burgeoning Astros ace Hunter Brown.
“It’s an individual award, obviously,” said Skubal, who was on-site in Las Vegas for the 2025 MLB Awards presented by MGM Rewards during the announcement. “But I’m proud of our team. I’m proud of the way that we competed this year. Obviously we went through some adversity late in the season, but we came back in the playoffs, we competed. Obviously came up short, but a lot of credit for this award goes to the guys that play behind me and the guys behind the dish, too, and just our organization.”
Skenes, who received all 30 first-place votes, finished ahead of Cristopher Sánchez, who shined for a Phillies rotation that lost ace Zack Wheeler in the second half, and Dodgers righty Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who went on to post a postseason for the ages following the vote.
“As I look back on my path in baseball up to this point, I got recruited to college as a catcher,” Skenes said. “Kept growing and started pitching and got better on the mound. Never thought I would end up here. Never thought I would be in the Major Leagues, much less winning a Cy Young. So it doesn’t always work out how you think it’s going to. But if you stay the course, you surround yourself with good people, you work hard, you’re going to do exactly what you’re supposed to do, whatever that looks like.”
Though the field was strong, there was really no question as to who the Cy Young winners would be. It was bound to skew toward Skubal and Skenes.
Skubal is now just the 23rd pitcher to win multiple Cy Youngs and only the 12th pitcher to win it back-to-back at any point in his career.
Pitchers to win at least two consecutive Cy Youngs:
1965-66 Sandy Koufax
1968-69 Denny McLain
1975-76 Jim Palmer
1986-87 Roger Clemens
1992-95 Greg Maddux
1997-98 Roger Clemens
1999-2000 Pedro Martinez
1999-2002 Randy Johnson
2008-09 Tim Lincecum
2013-14 Clayton Kershaw
2016-17 Max Scherzer
2018-19 Jacob deGrom
And Skenes, who had already started for the NL in the All-Star Game in consecutive years in 2024 and 2025 after getting picked by Pittsburgh with the No. 1 overall pick out of LSU in the 2023 Draft, has now officially followed up his Rookie of the Year win a year ago with this deserved acclaim as the NL’s top pitcher.
The only prior pitchers to win the Rookie of the Year and Cy Young within the first two seasons of their career were Fernando Valenzuela (both awards in 1981) and Dwight Gooden (ROY in 1984, Cy Young in 1985).
Skenes also joins Gooden and position player Kris Bryant (2015 ROY and 2016 NL MVP with the Cubs) as the only players to win a BBWAA honor in each of their first two seasons. This is also just the 29th time a pitcher has won the award unanimously (Skubal did so last year).
Skubal and Skenes weren’t just great pitchers in 2025; they contributed to their communities in meaningful ways. With Skubal and his wife, Jessica, deeply involved with Alternatives for Girls (an organization that empowers and supports homeless and at-risk women) and the one-time United States Air Force Academy cadet Skenes donating $100 to the Gary Sinise Foundation for every strikeout he recorded, each ace was his team’s nominee for the prestigious Roberto Clemente Award.
This is just the second time both All-Star Game starters won Cy Young Awards in the same year. Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson did so in 2001.
Here’s more on each Cy Young winner:
AL Cy Young Award winner: Tarik Skubal, Tigers
A subject of trade rumors as he nears his final season before free-agent eligibility, Skubal was drafted by Detroit in the ninth round out of Seattle University back in 2018, which is to say no one in the industry — including the Tigers — foresaw the feats he’s accomplished the last two years.
After breaking through with a unanimous Cy Young season in 2024, when he won the AL pitching Triple Crown, Skubal was, in many ways, even better in 2025.
Again making 31 starts, his ERA improved from 2.39 to 2.21 (both AL-bests), his strikeout total went from 228 to 241, his innings total climbed from 192 to 195 1/3, his WHIP went from 0.92 to an MLB-best 0.89 and his league- and ballpark-adjusted ERA went from 74% better than league average to 87% better than league average (again, both AL-bests).
“You just gotta do the same thing that you did the year prior that set yourself up for that kind of success,” Skubal said of his approach to 2025. “So you know, not adding any pressure or not letting outside environments dictate what I did or who I am. I’d say that was a challenge in itself.”
With a changeup that rated as MLB’s most dominant pitch by run value (+25), along with a fiery four-seamer, Skubal struck out 32.2% of opposing batters and limited them to a .200 average and .559 OPS.
“A lot of it goes to our pitching coaches, our catchers, the organization, the way we do pitch design and track that stuff,” Skubal said. “A lot of that came after I got hurt and rehabbed in 2023. I was able to work on things for extended periods of time on a rehab assignment that maybe is not necessarily what I’m able to do in the Spring Training setting. So there’s kind of a little bit of a blessing, I guess, in getting hurt in that aspect.”
Though it didn’t factor into voting conducted at the conclusion of the regular season, Skubal met the moment in the postseason, allowing a grand total of four earned runs on 10 hits with four walks and 36 strikeouts in 20 2/3 innings across three total starts against the Guardians and Mariners in the AL Wild Card Series and AL Division Series.
This is a true ace and leader at the peak of his powers, capable of breaking the bank one year from now. In the meantime, another Cy for his shelf will do.
NL Cy Young Award winner: Paul Skenes, Pirates
It’s impossible to overstate how ridiculous the start of Skenes’ career has been.
It’s not just the Midsummer Classic starts and the awards he’s already accumulated in the 857 days since he was drafted. The numbers are historically overwhelming. Skenes’ 1.96 career ERA at this point is the lowest through 55 starts in any pitcher’s career in the Live Ball Era (since 1920).
As far as what he did in his Cy Young year, specifically, Skenes’ 10-10 record – a product of him receiving an average of 3.4 runs of support per game, the third-lowest of any qualified pitcher in MLB this season – belied just how much he overwhelmed the opposition.
Skenes’ MLB-best 1.97 ERA was more than half a run lower than his closest competition in the NL and nearly a quarter of a run better than Skubal’s AL-best mark. Skenes also had an MLB-best 217 ERA+ (117% better than league average) and 2.36 Fielding Independent Pitching mark. He led the NL in WHIP (0.95) and homers per nine (0.5). His 216 strikeouts ranked second in the NL and were the most for a Pirates right-hander.
With 187 2/3 innings pitched, Skenes was the first pitcher in MLB to post a sub-2.00 ERA with at least 185 innings since Jacob deGrom with the 2018 Mets.
“There’s mental prep work every day,” Skenes said of his approach. “I think it’s in everything that you do. Going into each game is pretty much the same preparation for every game. The four days, five days leading up to it. Pretty much do the same thing. It’s boring, but that’s kind of what you have to do.”
After finishing third in the Cy Young voting in a rookie season in which he debuted on May 11, 2024, Skenes left no doubt that the award was his this year. He’s just the third Pirates pitcher to win this prize, joining Vern Law (1960) and Doug Drabek (1990).
“It truly is a team effort with the coaches that we had and the players,” Skenes said. “It’s pitchers making each other better, our catcher-pitcher relationship, coaches, the organization putting you in good spots to succeed. I couldn’t have done it by myself, and I’m super grateful that I had the infrastructure around me and the people around me to succeed.”
And with a deep, seven-pitch arsenal that befuddled batters to the tune of a .199 average and .558 OPS against, growing work volume and clear confidence, there’s no reason to think Skenes can’t annually contend for this honor. He is as exciting a young ace as the sport has ever seen, with the Cy to show for it.
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