Paul Skenes’s Debut A Mixed Bag — But the Future Is Incredibly Bright
PNC Park: Pittsburgh, PA (PSF) —MLB’s #2 Prospect Paul Skenes made his Major League Debut on Saturday, commanding league-wide attention in the process.
Skenes completed four innings, allowing three earned runs on six hits. He walked two batters and struck out seven of the twelve batters he retired.
The box score is slightly misleading; Skenes was understandably up-and-down throughout the outing, likely a product of nerves, adrenaline, and a solid Cubs lineup. Nico Hoerner hit a solo home run off him in the 4th inning, and allowed two baserunners in the fifth to reach before being pulled by Derek Shelton.
His stat line could have looked a lot better too, but a disastrous meltdown by the Pirates bullpen put the Pirates in a deficit just like that. Then, the game went into Rain Delay.
The Pirates would end up winning the game 10-9, buoyed by a Yasmani Grandal three-run home run.
The most important part of this game though, was Skenes and his outing. Not everyone is going to have a Stephen Strasburg-type debut. Skenes is barely a year removed from an incredibly heavy College workload where he threw 122.2 innings and additional innings in the Playoffs, thus, his workload was being managed in triple-A and was managed on Saturday.
Yet, even in the small sample size, it was evident as to why Skenes is being perceived as a potentially generational talent and a future Cy Young Award winner.
Skenes has displayed elite command and his pitches at every level, walking just 2.4 batters per nine innings in his 281 career competitive innings. Normally, this would not be as eye-catching for other pitchers, but Skenes has powerful stuff that grades well above average — very rarely do flamethrowers display above-average command as he does.
He did walk two in his four innings, but you can likely attribute that to nerves and adrenaline. Regardless of that, his stuff will play just fine. In fact, it looks as if he has three potentially above-average pitches right out of the gate.
He averaged 100.1 miles per hour on his fastball, striking out four of the 7 hitters who faced it. His slider displayed a devastating break that likely hovered around 13-15 inches of horizontal break, although his one mistake came on a hittable slider. His “splinker” (splitter/sinker) looked quite effective, as Skenes recorded a strikeout with it and only gave up 1 hit off the splinker.
His curveball and changeup did not receive much usage, though his age and frame will allow him to work on the pitch for many years to come.
That electric arsenal, and the above-average command with which he wields it, translated to an elite 35 percent whiff rate, according to baseball savant.
Skenes has the pitch-mix to succeed right now, and the confidence to go with it. As he adjusts to pitching at the MLB level, now what must occur is learning how to pitch to Major League hitters, rather than brute-forcing with the fastball and going to the slider in two-strike counts. Skenes mentioned this as well, but getting ahead of hitters and throwing more strikes (he threw 54/84 for strikes) will greatly benefit him as well, and that will likely happen as he settles into the Major League environment.
Overall, it was a positive debut with room to improve, which is exactly what you want out of a pitcher with the sky as the limit.
