PAUL David SKENES
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Nickname:   N/A Position:   RHP
Home: N/A Team:   PIRATES
Height: 6' 6" Bats:   R
Weight: 235 Throws:   R
DOB: 5/29/2002 Agent: N/A
Uniform #: 30  
Birth City: Fullerton, CA
Draft: Pirates #1 - 2023 - Out of Louisiana State Univ.
YR LEA TEAM SAL(K) G IP H SO BB GS CG SHO SV W L OBA ERA
2023 EL ALTOONA   2 2.2 4 5 2 2 0 0 0 0 0   13.50
2023 FSL BRADENTON   2 3 1 4 0 2 0 0 0 0 0   0.00
2023 GCL FCL   1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0   0.00
2024 IL INDIANAPOLIS   7 27.1 17 45 8 7 0 0 0 0 0   0.99
2024 NL PIRATES   23 133 94 170 32 23 0 0 0 11 3 0.198 1.96
2025 NL PIRATES   5 31.1 21 30 4 5 0 0 0 2 2 0.186 2.87
Today's Game Notes
  • April 8, 2025: Less than a year into his Major League career, Paul Skenes might already be the best pitcher in baseball.

    That's not hyperbole    . He’s one of 79 pitchers to throw at least 140 innings since his May 11, 2024, debut, and among them he’s first in ERA, second in strikeout rate, and tied for third in average against, heading into Tuesday night's start against the Cardinals. You might think that with all the success, and given all the hype around being the No. 1 pick in the 2023 Draft and subsequently being named the 2024 NL Rookie of the Year, that we’d long since have nailed down a simple answer to a simple question:

  • Hey, what kind of pitches does Paul Skenes throw?
    In the age of high-powered camera technology that can track the speed, spin and movement of a ball to fractions of an inch, that shouldn’t be a complicated question – and for most pitchers, it’s not    . But in Skenes’ case, the prospect who came up throwing five pitches now throws seven, and that may yet be eight, because the cutter he was reportedly working on during camp hasn’t actually shown up in a game yet.

    Skenes is one of a handful of pitchers who throws multiple sliders – a traditional gyro slider and a sweeper    . He throws multiple fastballs, too – a four-seamer and a sinker. Plus, he’s one of a smaller handful of pitchers who throws both a splitter and a changeup, except the splitter isn’t really the splitter you’re used to, because it’s a “splinker,” and now we’re starting to stretch the bounds of what pitch classifications really even are.

    All of which means it’s worth explaining what each pitch is, why it’s labeled the way it is, and how it moves    . If it’s this hard to even pick apart pitch types to label them, just imagine what it must feel like for batters trying to figure out what’s coming.
     
    Skenes' Statcast pitch movement chart, showing how each pitch moves compared to MLB average    .

  • FOUR-SEAM FASTBALL (39%, 98 MPH)
     
    The number one    . The good old stinky cheese. The high hard one that most every pitcher has had forever. Skenes throws his extremely hard, second only to Cincinnati’s Hunter Greene (99 mph) in terms of average four-seam velocity among starting pitchers. Great, easy. Let’s move on.

    But … even this, for Skenes, isn’t straightforward    . For one thing, he throws from a very low release angle, bordering on sidearm, and it’s even lower in 2025 (18°) than it was in 2024 (23°, where 0° is sidearm and 90° is straight overhead). While a handful of relievers throw from funky angles like that, only four starters throw from such a low angle. It would be hard enough to pick up pitches from a 6-foot-6 pitcher throwing from that angle even if they weren’t A) so numerous and B) so nasty.

    It’s because of this release point and associated spin direction (2 p    .m. on a clock, from his point of view), that there was some pre-Draft discussion about whether the fastball had ‘bad shape,’ given that it doesn’t have any of the rising action you’d expect out of a four-seamer. (And it doesn't, with 5th percentile vertical break.) That was probably never really true, because of the velocity and command, but it’s true that it doesn’t really resemble the four-seamer that a more traditional pitcher like Justin Verlander is going to ride into the Hall of Fame. Only two four-seamers get more horizontal break than Skenes’ 16.7 inches of arm-side movement, and the vertical action is well below-average.

    Not, of course, that it’s mattered. Skenes has thrown the pitch 906 times in the Majors, and allowed all of 14 extra-base hits – one of which came when Shohei Ohtani managed to turn around 100 mph.

  • SPLITTER, a.k.a. “SPLINKER” (35%, 94 MPH)
     
    Let's dive right into the fun stuff    . The “splinker” is a sinker/splitter hybrid – hence the name – that was first popularized in the Majors by Minnesota’s Jhoan Duran, and is now used by pitchers like Mason Miller, Ben Joyce and Red Sox rookie Hunter Dobbins.

    At 94 mph, it’s much faster than the average splitter (86.5 mph), just 4 mph slower than his four-seamer, and that’s why it’s not a splitter. With a spin rate of about 1750 rpm, it kills spin much more than the average sinker (2150 rpm), and that’s why it’s not a sinker, to say nothing of the clearly split grip he showed off in an interview with Rob Friedman last summer.
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    “It’s not like any other sinker, and it’s not like any other splitter,” Skenes told MLB.com’s Sam Dykstra last year, when he was still pitching with Triple-A Indianapolis. “It’s a hybrid pitch. … Call it whatever you want.”

    Skenes, for his part, calls it a sinker, as he said both to Friedman and in a July 2024 Wall Street Journal article. For a while, so did Statcast, though his addition of a different kind of two-seamer – more on that below – forced a change for 2025 to keep them separate.
    On one hand, ‘Sweeper’ was added as an official new pitch type for 2023 due to the sheer number of pitchers throwing one (nearly 300 of them in 2024). Conversely, the relatively small number of pitchers throwing splinkers or ‘kick changes’ or ‘churves’ or anything else like that means there is a high bar to clear before an official new categorization is made.

    The end result is that Skenes’ splinker is thrown harder than the average splitter (by nearly 8 mph) and drops more (+3 inches) than average and runs in to righties more (nearly +4 inches) than an average splitter. Whatever you want to call it, it’s been a top-five most valuable pitch in baseball (+18 Run Value) since his debut.

    Not bad for a pitch he discovered by accident while playing catch after the College World Series.

  • CHANGEUP (9%, 88 MPH)
     
    Mainly a weapon against left-handed hitters, Skenes started using his changeup more at the end of last season – 40% of his career changeups thrown came in September alone – and it’s easy to separate this one from his splinker simply by looking at the grip. While the splinker has a splitter-esque grip, with the index and middle fingers split wide, Skenes’ changeup is split between the middle and ring fingers, as he showed off in this 2023 video during the College World Series.
     
    Like pretty much everything he throws, Skenes gets more velocity on this one than average (+2 mph). Like the four-seamer, it’s a lot more about the horizontal break than the vertical action, because this changeup gets nearly 5 inches more tail than average – or about as much as Devin Williams’ famous “Airbender,” just without the same dropping action.

  • SWEEPER (5%, 85 MPH)
     
    Or, as Skenes has called it, “the short one and the long one,” referring to the slider and the sweeper. (“He doesn’t throw a cutter, but I may call for a cutter or a slider depending on how big I want it,” said Grant Koch, who caught Skenes in Triple-A last year, showing that there really is a difference between the sweeper and the slider.)
    While both are thrown at the same velocity, the sweeper gets 10 inches more break than the gyro slider does, and that’s mostly because he’s using the spin more efficiently. (Last year, the sweeper had 37% of spin contributing to movement, while the slider was at 26%.)
    It’s absolutely wild to watch a video like this and realize that Skenes is throwing a thing like this only one out of every 20 pitches.

  • SLIDER (5%, 85 MPH)
     
    “The short one” does have a different usage than the sweeper, because while it has similar drop and velocity to the sweeper, it doesn’t make that hard left turn that the big one does. That all makes it hard to tell the difference until it’s too late, which gives Skenes the ability to steal a strike or get some weak contact.

    Like almost all of his pitches, this one is something of an outlier. In this case, it's the way it hangs up, in that while you'd expect most sliders to have at least some downward movement, Skenes' doesn't. It actually stays up longer than the hitter expects, as opposed to diving more, so while you might read "fourth-lowest vertical drop in baseball among sliders" as a negative, it might be better to be more extreme in an unexpected direction than to simply be average.

  • SINKER (5%, 97 MPH)
     
    We haven't really seen all that much of one of Skenes’ new offerings this year, though the early results are intriguing – a 97 mph fastball that gets 3 inches more drop and 3 inches more tail than the average sinker certainly sounds like a real weapon.

    Given that he’s only thrown nine of them this year, it’s hard to do anything other than gawk – it’s thrown nearly as hard as his four-seamer but drops seven more inches, which seems deeply unfair. What's most interesting about this one is what it means for his continuing unpredictability going forward. Between this, his four-seamer, his changeup and his splinker, he now has four different pitches that have arm-side movement, with multiple different velocity and movement profiles. What do you even do with that, as a hitter?

  • CURVEBALL (2%, 84 MPH)
     
    Barely seen this year due to increased usage of his splinker, changeup and sinker, the curveball is a somewhat unusual pitch because it really doesn’t move like a curveball – or, really, much at all. Despite average spin, he’s getting six to seven inches less break than average in both directions on it, making it almost more of a slower gyro slider variant than anything else. Only about half of the spin on the pitch is actually going toward movement, and while you don’t have to have perfect spin to have a good curveball, it’s worth noting that most curves have at least three-quarters of their spin used for movement, and, in some cases, all.

    It is, for now, more of a show-me pitch. It remains an open question as to whether Skenes is using it to add some deception to his slider – the spin direction is at least a little more vertical – or if this is yet another weapon that still has some more refinement available in the future.

  • NOT USED (YET): CUTTER (0%)

    But wait! There’s more. Maybe. That cutter he showed off in Spring Training looked really good, and yet he hasn’t flashed it yet so far this season.
     
    Where, you might be wondering, could that even fit in? Fortunately, he told Jake Mintz of Yahoo exactly that in March.

    “I didn’t have anything like that before, and it was kind of like, ‘Well, I throw 100. Why don’t I throw a 90 mph slider,' basically? Why don’t I throw a breaking ball that’s around 90? Because I can. My sweeper was around 85 last year, and so that’s part of it, but the sweeper is so big that if I don’t get any swings on the cutter, it’s still going to get me swings on the sweeper.”

    He’s right    . There is still an unused part of the velocity band, because he throws three pitches at 93 mph or harder (four-seam, sinker, splinker), and four pitches in the 80s (changeup, slider, sweeper, curveball). There’s a gap between the 88 mph changeup and 94 mph splinker, to say nothing of the fact that a cutter wouldn’t move like either of those pitches. It would fit a slot he has left open. It would drive batters batty.

    “Really,” he added to MLB.com’s Alex Stumpf, "[I'm] just trying to create more swing decisions. That’s what it boils down to.”

    Skenes, as it turns out, is not just a physically gifted pitcher, though he’s of course that. He’s also a tinkerer, always looking for a path to improve, even if he’s already so valuable that he’d be a superstar by just doing nothing at all differently than he does now. That, it seems, is not going to change.

    “I’m never going to stop doing that,” Skenes said this spring. “Maybe I’ll throw a knuckleball 10 years from now.”

    We’d like to see that. He’d probably be great at that, too. (M Petriello - MLB.com - April 8, 2025

     


  • March 17, 2025:  Of all the pitches in Paul Skenes’ arsenal, he happened upon his best by accident. The “splinker” -- his hybrid splitter/sinker -- was born during catch play last year and refined into one of the best offerings in the game. Skenes is a tinkerer, and that natural curiosity led to a gem.

    “It’s kind of amazing what you can do with a baseball if you really want to,” Skenes said, the same way Beethoven might have said it about a piano or Julia Child about chicken.

    This winter, Skenes’ tinkering yielded two new pitches: a cutter and a sinker. The cutter was born out of a desire to have a breaking ball in the 90 mph range, and he’s offered a peek at it in his first three Spring Training outings. The sinker, on the other hand, hadn't been used much in his penultimate spring start.

    "I got a couple outs on it today, so that's all [the feedback] I need,” Skenes said. “I haven't thrown it a ton before today in Spring Training, but I'm happy with where it is." Identifying what is a splinker and what is a sinker isn’t exactly easy work. After all, one pitch is half of the other pitch. Going by Baseball Savant’s data, Skenes’ splinker averaged 94 mph, 30.3 inches of vertical drop, 14 inches of horizontal break and 1,760 rpm of spin last season. (His splinker is currently classified as a sinker on Baseball Savant.)

    Skenes saying he got a couple outs with the sinker is the best clue we have to work off of, but looking at the movement profile of his fastballs, there are some outliers that look like sinkers: 

    Bearing in mind that it’s a small sample size, that bushel of outlier pitches that don’t quite fall into the four-seamer or splinker pockets averaged 97 mph, 22 inches of drop, 14.3 inches of horizontal break and about 2,250 rpm of spin. In short, Skenes is trading some vertical movement for extra velo and spin.

    Those two results might also offer a peek of how the pitch could be used. Skenes has talked this spring about wanting to be more efficient, and he wasn’t exactly his most productive early Monday, throwing 85 pitches and needing to be lifted in the fourth inning so he could guarantee a fifth frame. What better way to get a quick out than a first-pitch inside sinker, like he did to Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers there for a groundout to third?

    Or this spot later in the third, with two runners on and one out, where he went to a presumed sinker again, this time getting Jose Miranda to pop out:

    "Just giving it another shape, I think, for hitters to respect,” Skenes said about why he added the pitch. “I think it complements my other pitches well by missing barrels.”

  • Of course, there is the argument that Skenes’ pitch mix is already pretty nasty, and sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. He was mainly a fastball/slider pitcher in college and was selected first overall in the 2023 Draft. The base model version of Skenes is quite good. But if he wasn’t willing to tinker or try out new pitches and grips, the splinker wouldn’t be a hitter’s nightmare.

    “[It’s] not just him, but guys that have weapons like him don’t need to tinker at times,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “You can just use the elite fastball, the splinker, whatever he has. But the other part of Spring Training is the process of working on things, and there’s very few guys that have it in their back pocket where they can go get it and use one pitch at a time, and we’ve seen him be able to execute that.” (A Stumpf - MLB.com - March 17, 2025)

Personal

  • Skenes graduated from El Toro High School in Lake Forest, California. He was team captain as a senior and graduated with a 4.76 GPA, 11th-best in his class.

    Paul chose the Air Force Academy for: “The opportunities it presents both while I am here and after I graduate from here. Also, the people I meet here are the best people to be around and will make me be better.”

  • Paul's uncles Mike and Pete served in the Navy. His uncle Dan served in the Coast Guard.

  • Paul enjoys fishing in his spare time. He grew up in, and is, a Los Angeles Angels fan.

  • Skenes was excellent on the mound and at the plate for Air Force again in 2022, which helped the Falcons to their first postseason appearance since 1969. Most impressive was his transition from closer in 2021 to a rotation workhorse in 2022. He went 10-3, 2.73 ERA, with 96 strikeouts in 85.2 innings, while also hitting .314 with 13 homers.

    Heading to Louisiana State for the 2023 season, Skenes pitched with Team USA during the summer in 2022, where he struck out four batters in four innings.

  • March 31, 2023: Skenes spent the first two years of his career at Air Force. He had a 12-4 record, 11 saves, and a 2.72 ERA in his time in Colorado Springs. Evaluators liked his talent but wondered how he’d fare against better competition. Under the tutelage of former Twins pitching coach Wes Johnson, Skenes has thrived and then some in Baton Rouge.

    Skenes hasn’t allowed more than one run in any of his seven starts in 2023. He struck out at least 11 batters in every outing so far. The SEC is the best conference in the country and in three SEC starts he has a 0.89 ERA with 35 strikeouts against Texas A&M, Arkansas, and Tennessee. 

    The rise in strikeouts is eye-popping. In his first year as a starter last year, he struck out 96 batters in 85.2 innings.

    In 2023, Paul became the best college pitching prospect since Stephen Strasburg in 2009 and a potential No. 1 overall pick on the mound, so he hasn't picked up a bat this spring. He won Southeastern Conference pitcher of the year honors, led NCAA Division I in strikeouts (209, breaking Ben McDonald's school and SEC record), strikeouts per nine innings (15.3) and WHIP (0.75) and ranked second in wins (12), ERA (1.69) and opponents' average (.165). (June 2023 - Dan Weiner)

  • Skenes has been the prized possession in terms of arms from this draft class for quite some time, but he did not start his collegiate career with the LSU Tigers. During Jay Johnson's free-agency-like off-season, he could woo Skenes to join him down in Baton Rouge and step away from the Air Force Academy, where he had spent the last few seasons as a two-way standout.

    He's a 6-foot-6, 235-pound right-handed pitcher with a massive and physical presence on the mound. He has that look of a big right-hander that you do not want to see toeing the slab against your squad. Not to mention, he throws 100 mph and holds his velocity deep into games.

    Skenes is a 3-pitch mix player that has a ton to like with his offerings. The fastball gets up into the triple digits and is often an upper-90s pitch with a ton of late carry that can just be a real problem to the opposition.

    He pairs that with a changeup that he replicates arm action really well on, getting it in the upper-80s and showing the ability to climb into the low-90s on the pitch with some tumble to it. He also has the upper-80s slider with a sweep to it, missing barrels.

    The makings of a great pitcher are there between the pitch mix and the physical specimen that he is on the mound. Tons to love and project on when it comes to Skenes, making him attractive at the very top of this 2023 draft class.

    After all, he's had a remarkable year for LSU, pitching in 16 games, totaling 99.1 innings pitched to this point. Skenes has struck out an incredible 179 opposing hitters over his 99.1 innings of work. He's pitched to a 1.90 ERA and a 0.79 WHIP while managing an 11-2 record.

    Any pitcher whose arm is capable of throwing 100 mph should be on your draft board. It's not all about velocity, but Skenes can throw 100 mph and also hold his velocity for up to 9 innings, throwing 101 mph on the 124th pitch of a start against Tulane.

     Skenes has a three-pitch mix and command to put hitters in a blender. He is able to dissect the strike zone and control both sides of the plate. He can work in & out on the plate and get the job done efficiently. It's bat-missing stuff that makes for a treat to watch whenever he is on the mound.

     Skenes has a ton to offer for a big-league organization. It's a pro body, a clean operation, and an incredible pitch mix. Given all this, he has an extremely high floor moving forward. (Tyler Kotila - June 8, 2023)

  • June 26, 2023: The best college pitcher in the country, Paul Skenes proved he was worthy of the title after being named the Most Outstanding Player of the College World Series.

  • When the 2023 MLB Draft kicks off, the buzz surrounding the event will center around which of the LSU superstars — outfielder Dylan Crews and right-hander Paul Skenes — will be selected first overall. Whichever one doesn’t go first is likely to go second. (Torres - July 5, 2023 - The Athletic) (Editor's note: Skenes went first overall and Crews second.)

  • July 2023: The Pirates chose Skenes in the first round (#1 overall), out of LSU. With a signing bonus of $9.2 million, Skenes overtook Spencer Torkelson ($8,416,300) for the largest bonus in MLB Draft history. Paul signed with scout Wayne Mathis.

  • Is Olivia Dunne dating Paul Skenes? Here's what to know about LSU gymnast's rumored romance with Pirates phenom. A new power couple might be about to take over the sports world.

    It's been a ridiculous year for LSU athletics, as the Tigers captured national championships in baseball and women's basketball. Now, the Tigers might have produced one of the most star-studded couples in sports.

    Gymnast and social media star Olivia Dunne is rumored to be dating Pirates prospect Paul Skenes, who helped LSU win the College World Series in June before getting selected first overall by the Pirates in the MLB Draft.

    Dunne and Skenes both just completed their junior years at LSU, though it was the first in Baton Rouge for Skenes. The national player of the year is now beginning to work his way through the Pirates' system, but it certainly looks like he and Dunne are staying in touch, to say the least.

    Dunne hasn't confirmed that she's dating Skenes, but fans have picked up on some clues from her social media posts that indicate they just might be official.

    Dunne posted a Snapchat image of herself wearing a Pirates hat, and another image indicates she was in Bradenton, Fla., where Skenes started his career with the FCL Pirates. The Internet took notice of the coincidences. It also noticed something even more telling in one of the images: A baseball glove. The glove's stitching indicates it's the same brand that Skenes used at LSU. 

    Dunne's newest Snapchat stories added fuel to the fire on Aug. 12, when she tagged her location as Bradenton and said, "good to be back!"

    Dunne was openly supportive of LSU baseball during the team's run to the national championship in June. That's no surprise, considering she's an LSU athlete herself, but Dunne made it all the way out to Omaha to cheer on Skenes and the team during the College World Series.

    Dunne also took to Instagram to congratulate Skenes and his former LSU teammate Dylan Crews when they were drafted first and second overall, respectively, in July.

    Does that mean Dunne and Skenes are dating? Not necessarily. It would be quite the coincidence, however, if Dunne just happened to be in Bradenton and wearing a Pirates hat while Skenes was preparing to debut nearby.

    Skenes threw 11 pitches in his FCL Pirates debut, seven of which were at least 100 MPH. It was a quick stint for the No. 1 pick, but he'll be sticking around in Bradenton with the High-A Marauders as he begins to inch closer to the majors. (Dan Treacy - Aug. 12, 2023)

  • In 2024, the Baseball America Prospect Handbook rated Skenes as the #1 prospect in the Pirates' organization.

  • April 19, 2024: Paul appeared on ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show where Pittsburgh’s top prospect spoke on professional baseball, his mindset, and of course, his fastball velocity.

    "I don't know how I do it." Skenes admitted. “When I was a junior in high school, I was probably throwing 86 mph. So it’s happened recently.” Skenes is less than a year removed from being selected first overall in the 2023 Draft out of LSU. So far on the young season, he’s struck out over half of the batters he’s faced (27 of 47) and has yet to give up a run in 12 2/3 innings pitched. Of 210 pitches he’s thrown on the year, 74 have been fastballs at 100 mph or above.  

    "It's different, that's something I'm learning right now," said the 21-year-old of his transition from college to pro ball. "Obviously Triple-A is different from the big leagues, but Triple-A is also different from college. Everything's just a little bit different. They're using wood bats, but the hitters are better. So just a bunch of little adjustments that you have to get used to."

    Skenes' success, of course, hasn't been all to do with his high-powered fastball. He also talked about using the pitch timer to his advantage in dealing with hitters, saying, "I love it ... There are guys, for sure, who don't like to be rushed, or who don't like to wait, and those are the guys you can try to rush or run out the pitch clock on."  

    Forthcoming as he was about the challenges and lessons Minor League Baseball has offered to him, Skenes didn't have much news to break concerning his impending callup, whenever it may be.

    "You know about as well as I do when I'm going up," Skenes said. (SS Chepuru - MLB.com - April 19, 2024)

  • May 8, 2024: The Pirates announced that they are promoting their top prospect to the Majors. Skenes, a fireballing right-hander, is scheduled to make his first start on May 10 against the Cubs at PNC Park.

    Skenes was the first overall pick in last year’s Draft and is currently ranked as the No. 3 prospect, and top pitcher, in the game by MLB Pipeline. The 6-foot-6 Skenes burst onto the national scene last year with Louisiana State University, being named the Division I National Player of the Year and leading his school to the College World Series title.

  • Armed with a fastball that consistently registers in the triple digits and a wipeout slider, Skenes certainly lived up to the hype during his time in the Minors this year, where he recorded a 0.99 ERA and 45 strikeouts over 27 1/3 innings with Triple-A Indianapolis. He has also developed his pitch repertoire in his time as a professional, mixing in his changeup, curveball and “splinker” (a sinker-splitter hybrid) more, adding additional weapons to his arsenal.

    While there were some cries for Skenes to start the season in the Majors, the Pirates wanted to be diligent with his adjustment to the professional game and his workload management. After throwing 112 1/3 innings in his first two collegiate seasons with the Air Force Academy, he threw 122 2/3 frames as a junior with LSU. He also pitched the normal college routine, making one start a week, rather than following a typical professional five-day rotation schedule. Because of that, the Pirates opted to have him toss some shorter outings with Indianapolis before stretching him out further in mid-April.  

    It’s easy to see why keeping Skenes’ right arm strong is the Pirates’ top priority; MLB Pipeline grades his fastball as an 80, the highest possible mark on the scouting scale. Some have suggested Skenes is the top pitching prospect since Stephen Strasburg, and even his opponents have marveled at his stuff.  “I think he was probably throwing like 110 [mph],” Orioles infielder Jackson Holliday said after striking out against Skenes at Spring Breakout in March. “That’s what it looked like.”

    “If he keeps throwing like that, it won’t be too long until he’s in the big leagues,” Holliday later said of Skenes. It turns out he was right. (A Stumpf - MLB.com - May 8, 2024)

  • May 10, 2024:  Paul woke up to three missed calls from a number he didn't have saved on his phone. He had thrown his scheduled bullpen session before Triple-A Indianapolis' 11:08 a.m. ET game against Louisville and he needed a nap after the game.

    It turns out that call was from Miguel Pérez, Indianapolis' manager, who was asking if Skenes was going to go to the team dinner. Skenes hadn't heard of a team dinner and was confused. After a bit of back and forth trying to figure out what was going on, Pérez hit Skenes with the real reason for his call: "Are you really gonna make me look for another pitcher on Saturday?"

    "I don't know, am I?" Skenes asked back.

    The wait was finally over. Skenes, who is MLB Pipeline's No. 3 prospect and top pitcher, was heading to The Show.

    "To be honest, I probably should have saved [his number] at some point," Skenes joked. "... I wasn't expecting a phone call to be honest. I wasn't expecting that to be how I found out."

  • On May 11 vs. the Cubs at 4:05 p.m., last year's first overall Draft pick will make his Major League debut with the Pirates. 

    In a way, his ascent to the Majors was rapid. You have to go back to Ben McDonald in 1989 to find a No. 1 pick who made his Major League debut faster than Skenes' 10 months and two days between being drafted and debuting.

    In another way, it took forever. Skenes' stuff looked Major League-ready last year when pitching for Louisiana State University. However, the Pirates opted to build him up slowly this year to get him used to the professional game and manage his workload. 

     "I didn't really know what to expect," Skenes said. "I kinda knew that once the buildup had finished that it could happen, but I didn't really know when that buildup was going to finish. In my mind, I've felt ready since the beginning of the offseason. But obviously, the club has their definition of 'ready' in terms of building me up." 

    The conservative approach led to some shorter outings and a gradual build up in terms of the number of pitches or innings he would be limited to each outing. Skenes didn't ask what those limits would be. He took the mindset of just trying to get outs as quickly as possible. Needless to say he did that, recording a 0.99 ERA and 45 strikeouts over 27 1/3 innings. Nearly 55% of his outs in the Minors were via the punchout.

    "I'm excited he's here," said manager Derek Shelton. "He deserves it. He's proven that he needed to be in the big leagues."

    The Pirates have enjoyed quality starting pitching this young season, but adding Skenes to the mix gives them another serious weapon. His stuff, ranging from the 102 mph fastball to the wipeout slider to his new "splinker" splitter-sinker hybrid, has played in pro ball so far. He's still trying to set up the fastball and slider, but if he needs to go to a changeup or curveball, he showed with Indianapolis that he can miss bats.

    "I'm excited," Skenes said. "The biggest thing is, I just want to see how it plays. I don't think it's going to be too different. Usages might change, that kinda thing. But it's gonna be fun to be with some veterans who have been around the game and learn from them." His arrival comes with heightened expectations. He is widely considered to be the game's top pitching prospect since Stephen Strasburg, and the anticipation for his start is going to have PNC Park at a fever pitch. Fan expectations can run wild about what he could potentially do while on PNC Park's pitching rubber, but he has his sights on one thing.

    "Just want to put us in a position to win," Skenes said. "I don't know about specifics yet. Kind of just started looking into them. Just want to execute and put us in a position to win."

    Skenes could potentially provide a big boost for a Pirates team that started hot but has stumbled of late to a 17-21 record. There's plenty of time to turn it around, and Skenes thinks there's good baseball to come.

    "I would definitely say we're close," Skenes said. "I think being around the team in Spring Training and watching the club over the past month or so, we're close. I think there is a lot to look forward to." (A Stumpf - MLB.com - May 10, 2024)

  • MLB debut (May 11, 2024): The Paul Skenes era has begun in Pittsburgh. Skenes made his MLB debut on a Saturday afternoon. And he held the NL Central rival Cubs to three runs in four innings in front of an energetic PNC Park crowd. He struck out seven and threw 84 pitches in his four innings plus two batters. 

  • May 12, 2024: When rehabbing with Triple-A Indianapolis last month, Yasmani Grandal got a chance to catch Paul Skenes and see his stuff first-hand. Much has been written about the right-handed phenom’s triple-digit fastball and wipeout slider, the two pitches he rode to the heights of the College World Series with LSU last year that established him as perhaps the greatest pitching prospect of his generation. Never hurts to be able to see that in-person.

    But when Skenes arrived in Pirate City in Bradenton, Fla., this spring, he made clear that he wanted to use his full pitch arsenal. That included a curveball, a changeup and a hybrid pitch between a splitter and sinker, which he referred to as a “splinker.”  Reporting back to Derek Shelton about that splinker, Grandal spoke highly, telling his manager, “This pitch is different.”

  • The Cubs saw that third pitch plenty during Skenes’ debut, and it was arguably his most effective pitch. His fastball was a bit more wild than usual, something Shelton attributed to the adrenaline of the day. The slider didn’t break as consistently, but still landed for called strikes, even if it’s not how Grandal drew it up.

    But the splinker? The Cubs swung at it 12 times and whiffed five times, which included a punchout of Yan Gomes to end the fourth. Grandal called for it often, too, with Skenes throwing it 21 times in his 84-pitch outing.

    “It was working good,” assessed Grandal. “Definitely diving.” Since the advent of pitch tracking in 2008, only nine pitchers have ever thrown a splitter 95 mph or harder. Skenes is one of them, averaging 94.7 mph.

    “You don’t see anybody throw it at 95, 96,” said Shelton.

    That’s part of what makes it an effective hybrid pitch. It has the extra velocity of a fastball, and the movement profile of a splitter, getting more vertical bite.

    In terms of movement, it profiles very similarly to Zack Wheeler’s splitter: 31.8 inches of vertical movement for Wheeler, 31.4 for Skenes, with 13.4 inches of horizontal movement for Wheeler and 13.8 for Skenes. Wheeler’s splitter is among the top in the sport in terms of run value. The difference is Wheeler’s splitter averages 85.4 mph compared to 94.7 mph for Skenes. Only the Angels’ José Soriano can match Skenes’ velocity and movement on the pitch. (A Stumpf - MLB.com - May 12, 2024)

  • On the Pat McAfee Show, Skenes revealed that he eats the same meal before every single start that he makes, which happens to be Chicken Alfredo.

    “Yeah, I eat Chicken Alfredo before every start,” said Skenes. “I got some crap from some of the guys before my last (start) because I had a ginormous plate of Chicken Alfredo a couple of hours before I was gonna pitch. They were basically telling me I wouldn’t even make it out to pitch. That they would just be sitting on the toilet before their outing. But that’s just what I do every outing. It helps me keep my energy.” (Reice Shipley on May 14, 2024)

  • July 12, 2024: Skenes was selected to participate in the 2024 All-Star Game. He became just the fifth rookie pitcher to start the All-Star Game — the first in nearly 30 years. He joins Hideo Nomo (1995), Fernando Valenzuela (1981), Mark Fidrych (1976) and Dave Stenhouse (1962).

    Skenes is also the first Pirates pitcher to start the midsummer classic since Jerry Reuss in 1975. He also is the first ever first-overall pick to be an All-Star the season after being drafted. 

    Skenes did not allow a hit in the first inning, getting Cleveland's Steven Kwan to pop out and Baltimore's Gunnar Henderson to ground out. He ended up walking Yankees outfielder Juan Soto to bring Judge to the plate. 

    There was some concern that the Skenes-Judge matchup might not happen given the decision by American League manager Bruce Bochy to hit Judge fourth in the lineup. That could have been bad for baseball fans. Soto's walk avoided that, even though the ball four pitch could have easily been called strike three. 

    Skenes did not strike out any batters in his one inning of work, but he did get Soto to swing and miss in a manner that few pitchers can. 

  • It’s special because it never lasts, like childhood, precious and fleeting and full of possibility. Paul Skenes is living that moment now, that blissfully simple stage of an athlete’s career before contracts and injuries, expectations and loss.

    At the All-Star festivities last summer, Skenes’ name was the first to be called at the amateur draft. Now he’s preparing for a stroll down the red carpet with his famous girlfriend, gymnast Livvy Dunne, on his way to start the All-Star Game for the National League.

    “Paul is everything that is right about this game,” said Torey Lovullo, the NL manager, praising Skenes’ humility and maturity. “I couldn’t be more honored sitting next to him.

    “When I mention the word ‘flow,’ he has that stitched on his glove. That is his word for what he wants to feel: ‘I want to feel like I’m flowing.’”

    Throwing a football helps Skenes find that flow. Throwing a softball helps keep his hand behind the baseball, to impart maximum backspin to his four-seam fastball. There’s band work, plyo balls, water bags. He’s finding new techniques as he goes.

    “I think building volume on your body is important,” Skenes said.

    Skenes did not dream of a pitching career while growing up near Los Angeles. He’s been pitching for only six or seven years, he said, and played catcher at Air Force, batting .367/.453/.669 with 24 homers. 

    There are 60 NL pitchers with more starts than Skenes this season, including several other All-Stars. But to Lovullo, who grew up near Hollywood as the son of a television producer, there was only one choice for the start.

    “I wanted to just make sure that the world got to see him,” Lovullo said. “We’re going to be on the biggest stage tomorrow, and I am here to support and promote Major League Baseball the best way I know how.”

    It’s a ceremonial honor, just one inning, but it’s more than showmanship. Skenes is as close to unhittable as any pitcher in baseball. This is his moment, and this is how to mark it. (Kepner - Jul 16, 2024- The Athletic) 

  • Paul's high school career, revisited. Skenes starred at El Toro High School, an Orange County powerhouse that has developed All-Star level talent, including sure-handed third basemen Nolan Arenado and Matt Chapman.

    Much like his predecessors, Skenes got his start in the infield. He first made his chops as a catcher, then as a third baseman, before settling into a role as a two-way player as a junior. 

    He proceeded to set the CIF Southern Section alight, showcasing his arm talent as a member of El Toro's bullpen. (Skenes recorded a 0.67 ERA as a closer.) Skenes' COVID-19-shortened senior season was much more of the same; he surrendered just one earned run in 27 innings, punching out 32 batters. Paul was similarly prolific at the plate, slapping three moonshots over the fence while posting an OPS above 1.000. 

    Skenes was more than just an athlete during his high school days. He was also an impressive student, graduating with a 4.76 GPA. (David Suggs - July 17, 2024)

  • Topps has been producing stand-alone sets featuring Major League Baseball players as Garbage Pail Kids for several years now, but 2024 Bowman Chrome, which was released on Wednesday, Sep 10th includes a first-ever GPK insert set in a wider, more traditional product. First, our pick for the most delightful rookie card of the game’s top young pitcher — “Parroted Paul" Skenes and his mustache. 

    On his card he is depicted smiling wide while his over-sized mustache is being pulled on by the beak of a red "pirate" parrot (Peck - Sep 11, 2024 - The Athletic)

  • Sept 12, 2024: The "splinker." Perhaps you've heard of it. 

    It's the signature pitch for a guy whose fastball can touch 102 mph, to give you some context as to just how devastating his combination split-finger and sinker has become.

    But how did Pirates rookie phenom Paul Skenes learn the pitch, and when did he begin to throw it?

    Well, it wasn't exactly planned.

    "The Draft came, and I got shut down, basically, after the College World Series," the flamethrowing Pirates right-hander said during an appearance on MLB Central, MLB Network's weekday morning show.

    "Then I started throwing again, getting ramped up to throw in games after the Draft. I started playing catch one day, and basically it accidentally came off my index finger [as opposed to the middle finger] and moved how it moves now. And I was basically like, 'That was good, I'm gonna keep trying to do that.'"  It was so good that it's been a big element to Skenes' campaign to win the National League Rookie of the Year Award. In 20 Major League starts so far, he's posted a 2.10 ERA with a franchise rookie-record 151 strikeouts over 120 innings for Pittsburgh.

    Skenes went on to discuss various other topics, including what he likes to do on his off-days, LSU football and much more. But the legend of the splinker took center stage, much like Skenes has since being called up to make his MLB debut on May 11.

    Skenes described concisely what the pitch was like when he first started throwing it at LSU before the epiphany. "It was fine, I didn't throw it a whole lot in-game," Skenes said. "It was fine in college, like, whatever."

    "Whatever" quickly turned into a nightmare for big league hitters, and the sensational splinker could be stymieing them for many years to come. (M Randhawa - MLB.com - Sept 12, 2024)  

  • Skenes struck out three in an abbreviated start Saturday, Sep 28th, 2024, and each was its own chef’s kiss. Seeing Soto and Aaron Judge for the first time since starting the All-Star Game, Skenes caught Soto looking and whirled a sweeper past Judge’s bat for strike three. Then, for the last out of his rookie season, Skenes dispatched Jazz Chisholm Jr. the same way he had Soto, with a triple-digit fastball cutting back onto the inside corner for strike three.

    “When you’re able to execute to your arm side with fastballs,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said, “that puts you in a different category.” 

  • Nov 20, 2024: Skenes finishes third in NL Cy Young Award voting. Skenes is one of seven Pirates to finish in the top three for a Cy Young, but he's the first since John Smiley in 1991. (A Stumpf - MLB.com - Nov 20, 2024)

  • 2024 All-MLB Team - Skenes was named to the All-MLB First Team. ( A Stumpf - MLB.Com - Nov 14, 2024)

  • Nov 18, 2024: Skenes becomes 2nd Pirate to win NL Rookie of the Year, 498 days after DraftThe Pirates pitcher edged out the Padres' Jackson Merrill and the Brewers' Jackson Chourio, with Skenes earning 23 of a potential 30 first-place votes and the other seven going to Merrill..

  • Nov 27, 2024: In the following Q&A, Skenes shares his thoughts about his first season in the big leagues and the notoriety that he receives while looking ahead to the 2025 season.

    Having had time to reflect on the honor, what does it mean to you to be voted National League Rookie of the Year?Skenes: It’s cool to have that experience and the hardware that comes with it. Masyn Winn of the Cardinals was one of the best defensive shortstops in the league and he’s a tough out -- and he wasn’t even a finalist. That’s how good the rookie class was. The game is so young, and I’m very new to it. I’m part of that young group, and I need to continue to work toward getting an edge.  What about being a finalist for the National League Cy Young Award along with Chris Sale of the Braves and Zack Wheeler of the Phillies, who both have much more Major League experience than you?Skenes: Truthfully, I think being a finalist for the Cy Young Award is a little more meaningful than Rookie of the Year -- because it’s all the pitchers in the league. It’s a tremendous honor to be up there with Sale and Wheeler. Obviously, they compete at a very high level and get a ton of strikeouts. But I think the biggest thing is their consistency every single outing. That’s something I strive for, and something they’re very good at.

    How are you able to stay level-headed with all the things you’ve accomplished and all the honors you’ve received? It often seems like you’re the person least impressed by all of that.Skenes: That’s how I’ve always been. Everything stems from the game and circles back to playing the game. That’s the only thing that matters. Because if you don’t execute and you don’t compete, then all that other stuff goes away. I appreciate them, but the awards are not why I play the game. How has your offseason been so far? Are you doing a good job of relaxing and doing things you’re unable to do during the baseball season, but also preparing for 2025?Skenes: I took three weeks off at the beginning of the offseason. Took a mini vacation to Florida for a few days. It’s just tough because my girlfriend [LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne] is in school and I’m trying to spend as much time with her as possible. A two-week trip to Italy or something like that? That’s not happening this offseason. People say, ‘Hey, do you want to do something?’ And I’m like, ‘We can do something, but we’ve got about 12 hours because I need to get back and lift in the morning.’ The biggest thing is getting my training in. As a champion gymnast and someone with a massive following on social media, your girlfriend Livvy Dunne is certainly a star in her own arena. Do the two of you help each other navigate all the attention you receive? Skenes: Yeah, I think so. She got to that point in her life a little bit earlier than I did. So, with the Draft and all of that, she was able to help me with those experiences. And I think I’m able to help her. We’re definitely able to share some of those experiences and help each other out.

    The Pirates were in the race for a playoff berth last season until experiencing a rough month of August. Do you and your teammates believe you can collectively achieve better results in 2025 and make a serious run at postseason play?Skenes: Yeah, the last couple months of the season -- especially that stretch in August -- left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. We were in it up until then and then had a bunch of things not go our way. My hope is, we got that out of our system and we’re going to have more self-awareness in terms of how we’re going to be able to win moving forward. I know the talent here is going to get better. We just need to have an identity and some good camaraderie. From there, I’m not going to say nobody is going to stop us, but I like our chances because there are simple and straightforward ways for us to win a lot more games without any huge, sweeping changes. I know I can’t wait for Spring Training to start. Nov 20, 2024

     Can you talk about how you’ve been embraced by the Pirates since they selected you No. 1 overall in the 2023 Draft?Skenes: Obviously, being drafted No. 1 overall was a huge honor, and since then I’ve had a fair amount of visibility and conversations with [chairman] Bob Nutting, [general manager] Ben Cherington and other team officials. And they listen. I was the No. 1 pick, who cares? Whatever. I was still a rookie last year, but they were listening. And they’re listening to guys like Mitch Keller, Bryan Reynolds and Ke’Bryan Hayes too. They’re receptive. They listen to what we think we need to do to win. Mr. Nutting is very approachable. He’s willing to listen because he wants to win, which is good because that’s not the picture that a lot of people paint of him. The only difference is we’re going to win in a little bit different way than the Dodgers and the Yankees. But we’re going to win. How do Pirates fans react whether they see you at the ballpark, at scheduled appearances or even at the grocery store or gas station?Skenes: It’s super humbling the way I’ve been accepted and embraced by Pirates fans, and I like to think of it as by the city of Pittsburgh as well. It’s really cool to see them show up at the ballpark and root for us. It’s one of the reasons why we play the game -- to see the fans in the stands. It’s just an awesome experience. (J Lachimia - MLB.com - Nov 27, 2024)

  • Jan 19, 2025:  The reigning National League Rookie of the Year, Paul Skenes, joined the chorus of Bucs who see this rotation leading the Pirates to bigger and better things this season.

    “We have the talent and stuff to do it,” Skenes said. “We just have to pass the line. I think that was something that we did really well at times last year. When we showed up, when it was my day to pitch, Bailey would go seven. I was like, ‘All right, it’s my turn to go seven.’ Kind of passing the line like that, it makes it fun as a rotation to do that, to put the team in a position to win on five consecutive days. I think that’s going to be the mindset this year.” 

    A rotation full of studs who can take the ball and shove is a great equalizer. It’s not the only part of the game, but if you get a quality start, you’re going to at least be in the contest. Finding a way to win more of those close games was also a recurring theme over the weekend. The Pirates lost 26 one-run games last year, the third most in the NL Central (the Cubs and Reds had 28 apiece). They had a losing record in extra innings, too (7-8). Learning from those experiences can go a long way.

    "We have buy-in,” Skenes said. “In the short time I've been here, we've had buy-in. There are a lot of guys, and guys that frankly I wouldn't have expected it from are talking about changing some things in the clubhouse and that kind of thing. Because we had a good clubhouse last year, but it wasn't anything crazy. “The nature of pro locker rooms compared to college locker rooms is just going to be different, so I learned a lot about how a pro locker room is last year. But I've also learned -- [from] the experience of last year and talking to guys this offseason who have won World Series and played for 15 years in The Show, that kind of thing -- about how a locker room should be, too, so we're going to work on getting it there, and we've started already."

  • What exactly does an ideal clubhouse look like? Well, it’s more of a "know it when you see it" answer. Players will be loose, but also be able to speak up when they feel it’s necessary. Skenes has the competitive drive, but he is hardly boisterous by nature.

    As Skenes enters his second season, though, it might be time for him to speak up more. The right to do so does come with experience, but being a face of this franchise -- and almost surely one of the catalysts if they do take that step -- should give him agency.

    "I don't know what the character of that will be, but I'll have probably a little more say -- and obviously having established myself a little bit -- but there's still a long way to go,” Skenes said. “I'm not going to overstep, but winning is winning. We've got to do what we've got to do to make it happen.

    “I’m just going to listen to my gut.”

    A more vocal Skenes could make the Pirates a contender. That’s what everyone at PiratesFest is hoping for, whether they are fans or on the roster. And for a young team, a large part of that improvement is going to have to come from the continued growth and development of players like Skenes and these pitchers.

    “I think we have a responsibility to do that to the city and within the organization,” Skenes said. “There are a lot of people who put a lot of work into it. We’ve got really good people within this organization, within player development, within the front office, stuff like that. I think we owe it to them. … If you go out and sign the [Shohei] Ohtanis, maybe it becomes a little bit easier -- he’s Ohtani for a reason -- but there’s no reason we can’t play fundamental baseball and execute at a very high level without having players like that. It’s not a complicated game.” (A Stumpf - MLB.com - Jan 19, 2025)

  • Jan. 2025: The dawn of a new season also means a new baseball video game is right around the corner. MLB The Show 25 will go on pre-order on Feb. 4 and will be available on all consoles on Mar. 18. The baseball video game franchise made a big announcement on Tuesday, as the cover athletes for the new edition of the game were released.

    Cincinnati Reds star Elly De La Cruz will be joined by Baltimore Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson and Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes on the cover.

  • Before taking the mound, Pirates ace Paul Skenes goes to war.

     The Ringer's Hannah Keyser shared a profile of the 2024 National League Rookie of the Year, and one of the more fascinating tidbits came when Keyser shared Skenes' unorthodox pregame ritual.

    "Skenes prefers not to listen to much before he pitches, just podcasts or audiobooks," Keyser wrote.

    In a separate social media post, Keyser noted that Civil War audiobooks are among his favorites to listen to before a start.  We aren't sure how, exactly, historical audiobooks put a world-class athlete like Skenes in the right mental headspace to perform at a high level, but it clearly works. (Eric Smithling  |  Last updated Mar 25, 2025 - YardBarker) 

  • Skenes’ start days are an event in Pittsburgh. Last summer, taxi drivers and store clerks talked about attending their first Pirates game in years. They had to see the new kid, the talk of baseball. 
    Skenes has breathed new life into a rebuilding franchise    . He transcends the local market. He’s a certified star. When he takes the baseball everybody in the world feels good that day. (Nesbitt - Apr 2, 2025 - The Athletic)

Pitching

  • April 21, 2024: Paul Skenes has 5 pitches! Here's his take on each of them:

    He’s been the Minors’ most dominant pitcher at Triple-A Indianapolis to begin 2024. And in many ways, he still thinks like that catcher calling pitches for Air Force, where he started his collegiate career from 2021-22. He saw time at first base during his Academy days.

    “Our coaches would like to say that’s a leadership opportunity,” he said, “which is what they’re doing more so than making baseball players. They’re developing leaders. Working with pitchers, planning, all that, that’s leadership. That was the mindset.”

    Carving up opposing batters has become Skenes’ full-time job in every sense. He’s yet to allow a run in his first four International League starts. He’s struck out 27 Triple-A batters and walked only four over 12 2/3 innings. He’s fanned 57.4 percent of his hitters faced to begin his first full season. Yes, the Pirates’ plan to slow play the 21-year-old right-hander has played a role in his stunning numbers, but there’s no denying this: Skenes has an arsenal ready to take the Majors by storm.  MLB Pipeline caught up with the No. 3 overall prospect in Indianapolis fresh off his latest eight-strikeout gem to find out more about his deep repertoire. 

    FASTBALL - It’s the fastball heard ‘round the Minors.  The LSU legend has thrown 112 heaters through his first four starts and averaged 100.2 mph, making it the fastest pitch in Triple-A. He’s eclipsed triple-digits 74 different times. No one else in Triple-A has hit 100 mph more than 24 times as of Saturday. Expand that to the Majors, and only A’s fireballing closer Mason Miller comes close with 64 pitches at 100+ mph. 

    There isn’t much of a secret in what allows Skenes to develop that velocity either. He stands at 6-foot-6 and is listed at a solid 235 pounds. Throw in a crossfire delivery that can look effortless, and the ball explodes out of his hand.

    “Just being strong and moving efficiently,” Skenes said. “It’s not magic. It works for me. Other guys do it differently. But that’s my bread and butter – being strong and moving efficiently.”  “I haven’t hit off him, but I assume that when you are hitting off him, it feels like he’s on top of you,” said Indianapolis pitching coach Drew Benes."

    The velocity is going to make it play a lot of places.  "That’s a key note because there has been some concern about Skenes’ lack of ride on the heater. So far, the pitch has averaged just 13.4 inches of induced vertical break. The average Triple-A fastball has an average of 15.6 inches of IVB. In theory, the lack of perceived rise should make it easier for hitters to read the fastball and make contact. And yet they haven’t with Skenes’ fireball. Triple-A opponents are just 3-for-28 (.107) with 18 strikeouts off the righty’s numero uno. He’s gotten misses on 37 percent of swings against the fastball; Triple-A average whiff rate for a four-seamer this season is 24.2 percent.

    “I think the eyes are the biggest thing,” Skenes said. “I don't look at my shapes a ton, unless I find something drastically wrong in how I'm moving with my body because the body is going to affect how the ball comes out of the hand too. So I might look at the shapes there. But yeah, I just laugh when people talk like the [pitch data] plot is the end-all-be-all.”

    SLIDER - Skenes has leaned on his fastball 53.3 percent of the time in the early going of 2024, and his most leaned-on secondary is his slider with a 23.8 percent usage rate. There’s a case to be made that the breaker, which averages 86.8 mph, is just as good as its straighter, faster counterpart.  The Bucs prospect has gotten 23 swings against his slider this season, and opponents have missed 12 times for a whiff rate of 52.2 percent, sixth-highest among Triple-A pitchers with at least 50 sliders thrown this season.  The 13-14 mph separation certainly helps, but perhaps the most notable aspect of Skenes’ slider is the variation in the amount of horizontal action. The slider has shown as much as 16 inches of horizontal movement like a true sweeper. It’s also shown even arm-side movement at times, acting more like a cutter.

    Skenes uses a combination of scouting reports and personal understanding of his command on a given day as factors in his decision of when and how to manipulate the length of the slider, but it’s the same two-seam-style slider grip.

    “I couldn’t tell you exactly what it is,” he said. “I just know what the short one feels like and what the big one feels like.”

    But figuring out which version of the slider can be a guessing game for more than just the batter.

    “He doesn’t throw a cutter, but I may call for a cutter or a slider depending on how big I want it,” said Grant Koch, who caught each of Skenes’ first three Indianapolis starts. “But a lot of times, it’s him deciding, and I’ll just read it. I know generally what it’s going to do from catching him now, and depending on the situation, he’ll make it shorter or bigger. But that’s something I can deal with on the fly.”

    SPLINKER - Fellow No. 1 overall pick Henry Davis referred to Skenes’ “splinker” in Spring Training. Benes says the Indianapolis coaching staff also calls it a splinker. When Koch uses the PitchCom, he calls for a sinker.

    It has a low 1,807 rpm average spin rate like a splitter. It has a 95.0 mph average velocity and 15.3 inches of average arm-side movement like a sinker.

    “It’s tough to scout for a little bit,” Skenes said. “I think that’s why they started calling it a splinker. It’s not like any other sinker, and it’s not like any other splitter. It’s a hybrid pitch. Call it whatever you want.”

    The pitch developed when Skenes was working to add a sinker back to his repertoire. As his four-seam velocity increased, college hitters were having difficulty catching up, and the right-hander didn’t want to give them a slower fastball they could touch. But with pro hitters (and their improved bat speed) looming after the Draft, the righty got to work after the College World Series on incorporating a fastball that would have more arm-side movement. One slip of his grip allowed Skenes to feel the pitch more on his index finger, thus killing more of the spin, and led to one of the most unique pitches in the Minors.

    “It happened by accident,” he said, “and then it became a conscious thing to get it off that [index] finger more. You watch the EDGE [performance evaluation] video, and it still comes off the middle finger last, but the feel for me and the thought is to get it off the index finger.  Skenes has thrown the hybrid splinker 26 times through four starts for a 12.4 percent usage rate. He’s gotten nine called strikes and whiffs for a CSW rate of 34.6 percent, above the 30 percent “good” standard.

    “You have to decide what you’re going to be on,” Benes said. “You can’t be on 102 and still hit off-speed, and if you’re on off-speed, you can’t hit 102. It’s something hard that creates movement. Hopefully, it’s an early-count, weak-contact pitch, but who knows. He’s young. He’s going to throw it a lot.”

    CHANGEUP - Skenes’ splinker gets called a changeup by the Pirates’ internal measurements even though it isn’t because the potential ace has a true one of those too. His version -- thrown with a Vulcan-style grip that splits the ring and middle finger -- dates to his days as a junior in high school, well before the slider took over as his best secondary.

    “I didn’t really have a slider my freshman or sophomore year at Air Force,” Skenes said, noting his pronation bias in his throwing motion. “I was fastball-changeup as a closer, so relying on that, it’s just something I’m super confident with.” The current edition comes in the upper 80s with 2,025 average rpm and 18.4 inches of average horizontal arm-side movement. He’s only thrown 15 cambios so far through four starts, all against lefties. Those have resulted in six swings and six misses, a perfect 100 percent whiff rate. 

    CURVEBALL - As if four pitches weren’t enough, Skenes has one more that hitters need to consider. Or that they need to start considering now anyway.

    “I started throwing [the curveball] during the season last year, probably the fourth or fifth week of the season in college,” he said. “I don’t think guys had it in their report because the first time it literally got touched was in the SEC tournament on a foul ball or something. It was always a take pitch or a miss pitch, and now it’s a little different because they have it in their report. But it’s a different shape. It’s the one with more hump behind it versus more of a flat spin [in the slider].”

    Skenes has thrown only seven curveballs in the young season, and four have come on 0-0 counts. With an 84.3 mph average velo, it’s his slowest pitch and has the steepest drop at 42.5 inches on average. It also features 7.4 inches of horizontal, making it slurvy, and it remains a distant fifth in one of the Minors’ deepest arsenals. (S Dykstra - MLB.com - April 21, 2024)

  • Skenes has a powerful 95-102 mph FASTBALL that looks very easy from his 6-foot-6 and 235-pound frame with the flat approach angle and carry on his heater making it almost impossible to hit. He gets lots of strikeouts with his 85-89 mph SLIDER that also grades 70. His 85-87 mph CHANGEUP can flash 60 grade on occasion, because he has advanced feel for the offering. And he has 60 grade control.

    Paul's success in pro ball partially revolves around the quality of his fastball. Questions arose about the pitch’s shape and whether—even if he can maintain its upper-90s velocity on a professional schedule—it would play against better hitters. If it becomes an issue, there are multiple avenues to explore, including changing the grip or the emphasis of a two-seamer as a way to continue the east-west profile created by his sweeping slider. In pro ball, Skenes threw his two-seamer at a 44% clip, far more often than his four-seamer.

    Paul's sweeper was an adjustment that came about through work at LSU, where pitching coach Wes Johnson helped him alter the pitch’s shape from its former, shorter-breaking iteration. As an amateur, scouts projected Skenes’ changeup as a potentially plus pitch. To reach that upside, he’ll need to throw the pitch more often.

    At LSU, Skenes threw the changeup just 7% of the time. In his brief pro experience, that jumped to 17%. At its best, the pitch is thrown in the upper 80s and features sharp fade and drop, but there’s work to do in order to get it consistently to that ceiling. The Pirates have already worked with Skenes to find a grip that works most consistently. Skenes also has size, athleticism and an outstanding work ethic that should allow him to get the most out of his ability, while also keeping himself open to attacking new challenges as he develops. (Josh Norris - Baseball America Prospect Handbook - Spring, 2024)

  • Skenes has a powerful 95-102 mph FASTBALL that looks very easy from his 6-foot-6 and 235-pound frame with the flat approach angle and carry on his heater making it almost impossible to hit. He gets lots of strikeouts with his 85-89 mph SLIDER that also grades 70. His 85-87 mph CHANGEUP can flash 60 grade on occasion, because he has advanced feel for the offering. And he has 60 grade control.

    Paul's success in pro ball partially revolves around the quality of his fastball. Questions arose about the pitch’s shape and whether—even if he can maintain its upper-90s velocity on a professional schedule—it would play against better hitters. If it becomes an issue, there are multiple avenues to explore, including changing the grip or the emphasis of a two-seamer as a way to continue the east-west profile created by his sweeping slider. In pro ball, Skenes threw his two-seamer at a 44% clip, far more often than his four-seamer.

    Paul's sweeper was an adjustment that came about through work at LSU, where pitching coach Wes Johnson helped him alter the pitch’s shape from its former, shorter-breaking iteration. As an amateur, scouts projected Skenes’ changeup as a potentially plus pitch. To reach that upside, he’ll need to throw the pitch more often.

    At LSU, Skenes threw the changeup just 7% of the time. In his brief pro experience, that jumped to 17%. At its best, the pitch is thrown in the upper 80s and features sharp fade and drop, but there’s work to do in order to get it consistently to that ceiling. The Pirates have already worked with Skenes to find a grip that works most consistently. Skenes also has size, athleticism and an outstanding work ethic that should allow him to get the most out of his ability, while also keeping himself open to attacking new challenges as he develops. (Josh Norris - Baseball America Prospect Handbook - Spring, 2024)

  • 2024 Season Pitch Usage/Avg. Velo: 4-seam Fastball 40.5% - 99.2 mph; Sinker 26.7% - 94.2 mph; Change 5.7% - 87.6 mph; Slider 17.8% - 85.8 mph; Curve 9.4% - 83 mph.

  • After working at 93-95 mph and touching 99 with his fastball as a sophomore, Skenes averaged 98 mph and hit 102 at LSU, with the flat approach angle and carry on his heater making it almost impossible to hit. His slider improved under the tutelage of Tigers pitching coach Wes Johnson, becoming an 85-89 mph beast with sharp break and absurd swing-and-miss and chase rates. His power changeup arrives at 88-93 mph with fade and is a solid offering when he lands it in the strike zone. 

    Physically imposing at 6-foot-6 and 235 pounds, Skenes is athletic with the body control to repeat a sound delivery and provide plenty of strikes. A classic No. 1 starter, he might have factored into the top three rounds as a position player, but that will be nothing more than a footnote for a frontline starter who should reach Pittsburgh in a hurry. (BA - Spring 2023) 

  • Paul's slider has improved under the tutelage of Tigers pitching coach Wes Johnson, becoming an 85-89 mph beast with sharp break and absurd swing-and-miss and chase rates, a true sweeper with almost 13 inches of horizontal break. His power changeup arrives at 88-93 mph with fade and is a solid offering when he lands it in the strike zone. 

    Physically imposing at 6-foot-6 and 235 pounds, Skenes is athletic with the body control to repeat a sound delivery and provide plenty of strikes. Paul works from the third base side of the rubber. He has good tempo throughout his delivery, with a fairly standard arm stroke in the back before releasing from a lower three-quarters slot with little or no recoil, head whack, or effort.

    Paul is about perfect in terms of delivery, build, and mechanics. His velocity is elite, and he delivers his pitches out of a unique release point. 

  • Paul has gone from sitting 92-95 mph with an above-average slider to becoming the hardest-throwing starting pitching prospect I’ve ever seen, and the only pitcher who’s in the mix to go first overall this July 2023.

    Skenes started out like a house on fire on a Friday night nearing the end of April 2023, sitting 99-101 mph with a plus slider at 86-90 mph, while he struck out five of the first seven batters he faced. He comes from a slot a little below 3/4, a low approach angle that gives him more miss on both the four- and two-seamers, with the four-seamer riding up while the two-seamer has some hard arm-side run. The slider has a lot of tilt, although I think it’s technically a sweeper, with spin rates into the 2900s and good contrast with the fastballs as they break in almost perfectly opposite directions out of his hand.

    Paul is listed at 6-foot-6, 247 pounds, with a big-league body already, and has a good delivery he repeats well, hiding his arm behind his body almost to release.

    There is nobody close to Skenes among pitchers in the 2023 Draft class. And the fact that he throws strikes with this kind of stuff, even if you only give him credit for being 96-99 mph, would make him 1-1 in most years. Stephen Strasburg and Gerrit Cole would top out at 100 mph, with better breaking stuff than Skenes, and they went 1-1. Mark Appel had less stuff, and he went first overall, as well.

    It’s fair to project a No. 1 starter ceiling for Skenes with some projection to the changeup and the obvious hope that he stays healthy, which some guys have with this kind of stuff. (Cole and Justin Verlander come to mind as comparable pitchers.) Skenes has the misfortune to play with a position player who has an even better argument for going first overall, however, LSU centerfielder Dylan Crews. (Law - May 2, 2023)

  • 2023 Season: Right-hander Paul Skenes made his first appearance since being selected with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, retiring all three batters he faced for the Rookie-level Florida Coast League Pirates. In total, Skenes threw 11 pitches, eight of which he landed for strikes. Of those 11 pitches, Skenes fired 10 fastballs that sat in the 99-to-101-mph range. Skenes broke a bat as well. (Santos - Aug 10, 2023 - milb.com)

    Skenes became college baseball's clear best pitching prospect at LSU last season, fanning 209 batters in 122.2 innings en route to becoming the first overall pick in the draft. He got limited opportunities as a pro, with Pittsburgh understandably being conservative after a full college season. However, Skenes should get a long look in Spring Training, and there are plenty of available spots in the Pirates starting rotation when he's deemed ready. 

  • Feb 29, 2024: Best fastball in the system? How about best fastball in the Minors? An argument certainly can be made as the No. 1 pick in last year’s Draft brings a heater that averaged 98 mph at Louisiana State last year and topped out at 102 mph. His flat approach angle and carry make the heater extremely difficult to hit and he commands it very well, reasons why he had a 30-percent miss rate on it last spring. (Callis, Mayo and Dykstra = MLB.com - Feb 2024)

  • May 18, 2024: Skenes became the first player in AL/NL history to pitch 6 or more no-hit innings with 10+ strikeouts within his first two career starts. 

  • June 5, 2024: Skenes made his fifth big-league start. Seven pitches into the game, he had thrown six pitches over 100 mph, the only outlier being an 85 mph slider to strike out Mookie Betts. Three pitches after that whiff — all swinging strikes — Shohei Ohtani was victim No. 2.

    By the time Skenes’ day was done, he had eight strikeouts and one walk over five innings, bringing his total to 38 Ks and 6 walks in 27 innings. His ERA also bumped up to 3.00 for the season, as he allowed three earned runs, the first two coming on a third-inning revenge ball by Ohtani.

    His home run came on a 100.1 mph fastball. Per MLB’s Sarah Langs, it was the fastest pitch Ohtani has ever homered off of.

    Absolute theater. Skenes’ strikeout of Ohtani was the first time in the pitch-tracking era (2008-present) that a starting pitcher has logged a strikeout with three pitches, all swinging strikes, all 100 mph or faster.

    Skenes threw 16 pitches at 100 mph or faster that day. That’s tied for fifth most in a game this season. In fourth place on that list? Skenes, of course. He threw 17 triple-digit fastballs in his May 11 debut against the Cubs.  (Weaver/Rosenthal - Jun 6, 2024 - The Athletic)

  • 2024 Improvements: Skenes' newest pitch is his confidence pitch: the “splinker.” It's a term Henry Davis coined after catching it, and it's one of the most unique pitches in the game. Its origins trace back to when Skenes transferred to Louisiana State and wanted to add a sinker to his repertoire, thinking it would play well to right-handers. He liked the pitch going into the season but didn’t think it was a good matchup for SEC hitters, so he rarely offered it.

    That changed once he got into pro ball, and he found a grip that gave it more dive, like a splitter. Now he had the sinker that he wanted for right-handers that could also be an off-speed offering for lefty batters.

    So does that make it more splitter or sinker?

    “You can call it a sinker, splinker, split, whatever you want,” pitching coach Oscar Marin said. “I call it super deceptive.”

    “I still think of it as a sinker,” Skenes said. “It’s funny to see guys swing at fastballs in the dirt.” (Alex Stumpf - June 15, 2024) 

  • Skenes is now five starts into his major-league career. Already:

    –He’s thrown more pitches at 100 mph or harder (53) than the guy he’s often compared to, Stephen Strasburg, threw in his whole career (29).

    –He’s piled up more swings-and-misses (80) than Shelby Miller, a one-time first-round pick in the draft, got all last season … on 663 pitches.

    –He’s up to 38 strikeouts in his first 27 innings in the big leagues. I found three Hall of Famers who didn’t strike out 38 hitters in a whole season back in a slightly different time:

    Jim Kaat, 1980 — 37 K, 134 2/3 IP          Jim Palmer, 1981 — 35 K, 127 1/3 IP

    Catfish Hunter, 1979 — 34 K, 105 IP

    And Skenes has passed all of them … in a month.

    So here’s my advice. Whatever you were thinking about doing on a day this guy pitches, don’t do that! Find a way to watch Paul Skenes pitch. It’s unlike anything or anyone you’ve ever witnessed. (Stark - Jun 10, 2024 - The Athletic)

  • July 5, 2024: Skenes has recorded 7 or more strikeouts in 9 of his first 10 career starts. That's an MLB record. 

  • Skenes rotates uncommonly fast, with a lower arm angle than hitters usually see from a pitcher that size. What helps even more, he added, is that though Skenes’ fastball averages 99.1 mph — the hardest of any pitcher in the majors with at least 60 innings — he has an exceptional feel for sequencing.

    “I don’t care if he’s throwing 120, if you don’t locate it, we’re going to figure it out at some point,” said the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman, who is 0-for-3 with a strikeout against Skenes. “It’s his location, his command of the baseball — that’s why he’s so good. And when you do make a mistake, it’s still 100 so we’ll foul it off. That’s the beauty of it, being able to command the baseball with that kind of stuff.” (Kepner - Jul 16, 2024 - The Athletic)

  • July 24, 2024: Skenes became the first pitcher in MLB with seven or more strikeouts in 11 of his first 12 appearances since 1901, via Sarah Langs of MLB.com No other player has more than nine such outings in their first 12 starts.

  • Sept. 10, 2024: Skenes has set a new franchise record for strikeouts by a rookie since 1900 with his 143rd strikeout of the season. 

  • Best candidate for NL Rookie of the Year according to The Athletic: 

    Paul Skenes!

    • Roger Clemens, who went on to win seven Cy Young awards, gave up 28 earned runs in the first six starts of his career. Skenes has given up 29 all season.

    • Then there’s Skenes’ ERA+. It’s pretty good. By which I mean 211! The last rookie starter with an Adjusted ERA that far above league average, with this many starts, was a fellow named Denny Driscoll (218) … in 1882.

    • Or how about this. After 22 starts, Skenes had racked up 167 strikeouts and a sub-2.00 ERA (1.99). How unusual was that? The last NL rookie to have an ERA under 2.00 and as many as 130 strikeouts in the first 22 starts of his first full season was Grover Cleveland Alexander … in 1911. 

    Since Skenes arrived in the big leagues, he leads all pitchers in the majors in ERA, strikeout percentage (32.9) and Win Probability Added (3.71).

    Get the picture? We’re talking about the most dominant pitcher in the game right now and arguably the most dominant rookie pitcher of modern times. I don’t know how you pick your rookies of the year. But that’s how I pick mine. (Stark - Sep 27, 2024 - The Athletic)

  • 2024 Season: From No. 1 pick to No. 1 starter in less than a year.

    That summarizes the rise of Pirates righthander Paul Skenes, who won a national championship with LSU in 2023, went first overall in the draft that year and then made his MLB debut on May 11 this year.

    While the Pirates did not contend for a championship in 2024, it wasn’t for lack of a frontline ace. Skenes pitched as advertised as a rookie, going 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA, 170 strikeouts and 32 walks in 133 innings. He allowed just 10 home runs in 23 starts.

    Even in a crowded National League rookie field, Skenes stood out. He turned in one of the strongest seasons by a rookie pitcher in the Wild Card Era, rivaling Spencer Strider, Kerry Wood, Brandon Webb, Roy Oswalt, Jose Fernandez and imported Japanese aces Hideo Nomo and Yu Darvish in terms of dominance.

    The various statistics outlined below illustrate why Skenes is Baseball America’s Rookie of the Year in 2024:

    1.96 ERA - Some baseball numbers require no context. An ERA hovering near 2.00 over a sizable sample is one such number.

    Skenes fell about 30 innings short of qualifying for the ERA title, but his 1.96 ERA was the lowest of any pitcher with at least 120 innings this season. In fact, it is one of the lowest ERAs for any pitcher with as many innings during the Wild Card Era.

    In the past 30 seasons, 10 different pitchers have a sub-2.00 ERA in a season of 120 innings or more. The list includes Clayton Kershaw (three times) and Pedro Martinez (two), with single appearances from Jake Arrieta, Kevin Brown, Roger Clemens, Jacob deGrom, Zack Greinke, Greg Maddux, Blake Snell and Justin Verlander.

    While those pitchers threw a lot more innings than Skenes did this year, they also were not rookies, like Skenes, and were not pitching for a last-place team like the 2024 Pirates.

    214 ERA+A microscopic ERA might not require context, but the age of the pitcher recording the microscopic ERA adds valuable context.

    Skenes turned 22 years old at the end of May. Only one pitcher as young—or younger—than Skenes had a better adjusted-ERA+ in a season of at least 120 innings during the Integration Era. That one pitcher: 20-year-old phenom Dwight Gooden for the 1985 Mets. Gooden was actually in his sophomore MLB season when he went 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA in 276.2 innings.

    So while Skenes isn’t at Gooden’s level of dominance—or workload!—his 1.96 ERA compared to the National League average of 4.13 and adjusted for his home park yields a 214 ERA+ that makes him 114% more effective at preventing runs than the average NL pitcher.

    Top ERA+ By an Under 22 year-old  Pitcher (Since 1947/Min. 120 IP)

    His 33.1% strikeout rate and 6.2% walk rate yield a 26.8 K-BB% that stands as the second-best ever for a rookie pitcher with at least 120 innings.  

    Braves righthander Spencer Strider holds the rookie record with a 29.7 K-BB% mark in 2022. The rest of the top five includes Twins lefthander Francisco Liriano (23.7), Gooden (23.1) and Mets righthander Noah Syndergaard (22.4).

    100 Pitches At 100 mph -- Power is key to Skenes’ success. No starting pitcher threw more pitches at 100 mph or faster than he did in 2024.

    Skenes threw exactly 100 pitches at the century mark in 2024—no rounding up!—more than twice as many as the Angels’ Jose Soriano, who threw 46 fastballs at 100 mph.

    In the Statcast era, Skenes has already thrown the sixth-most pitches at 100 mph among starters. Skenes is a rookie with one season under his belt. Everybody ahead of him has at least three seasons in the big leagues.

    Skenes trails only Hunter Greene, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Nathan Eovaldi and Gerrit Cole in total 100 mph fastballs thrown by starting pitchers since 2015. (Matt Eddy - Baseball America - Oct., 2024)

  • 2025 Improvements: Skenes worked in two new pitches to his arsenal, adding a cutter and sinker. (ian casselberry - March 1, 2025 - Yahoo Sports)

  • April 2, 2025: Paul Skenes has now made 25 starts in his major league career and owns a 1.92 ERA with 183 strikeouts.

    He's the only pitcher to record 175+ strikeouts while posting a sub-2.00 ERA over his first 25 big league games in @MLB history. (Brady Farkas - SI)