ARLINGTON, Texas — The first thing Paul Skenes told the Pirates after signing was that he wasn’t good enough.
At least not yet.
It was late July 2023, and the newly drafted No. 1 overall pick — fresh off one of the greatest pitching seasons in college baseball history — was in Bradenton, Florida, for an interview with his new employer. Skenes, director of player development John Baker and pitching coordinator Josh Hopper set up shop in Hopper’s office at the Pirates’ spring training complex.
Even the most optimistic prospects for Skenes couldn’t have predicted this future. Less than a year later, the 6-foot-6 hurler is scheduled to start the National League All-Star Game on Tuesday. He’s the first player to make the All-Star team the year after being drafted first overall.
And that honor is well deserved: Skenes has conquered the MLB, dominating his hitters with a 1.90 ERA in his first 11 starts, capturing attention, imagination and eyes.
But the road to professional stardom first wound through Florida’s Gulf Coast, where the three men met to chart a developmental path. The goal of their meeting was self-evident: figure out how to guide the most exciting pitching talent of the past decade to major-league dominance. Baker and Hopper came prepared with a series of suggestions, but asked Skenes to assess himself before sharing them.
“Without looking at our list, he listed [our recommendations] “In that exact order,” Baker, who holds a similar meeting with every player who joins Pittsburgh’s minor-league system, told Yahoo Sports. “Things that he thought about himself. It’s the only time I’ve ever been in that environment with a new player.
“And his list was more extensive than ours, and also more self-deprecating.”
One of the top items on Skenes’ agenda was the addition of a consistent third pitch, one that could help him better neutralize left-handed hitters. He burned batters his junior year at LSU — posting a 1.69 ERA in 122 2/3 IP with 209 strikeouts and a .449 OPS allowed — but he did so while relying almost exclusively on a two-pitch, fastball-slider combo. The mustached flamethrower flashed the occasional quality changeup, but he told Baker and Hopper he wanted something different, something better, something that could fool the best hitters on the planet.
And so Skenes went to work, tinkering and tinkering with what would eventually become the “splinker,” a unicorn offering with the speed of a sinker and the vertical depth of a splitter. It’s a whiff-snatching, grounder-inducing cheat code that helped propel Skenes to superstardom.
The development of such an effective pitch in such a short time illustrates so much of what makes Skenes unique. Only someone with his rare combination of athleticism, competitive intensity, work ethic and intellectual humility could have learned and deployed such an offering.
Skenes made the splinker, and the splinker in turn made Skenes.
While Skenes played a little with the field during his brief debut as a professional player in five games last summer, Pirates officials didn’t actually get to see the field until late last winter.
Sources told Yahoo Sports that Skenes spent part of last offseason at the University of Georgia, where he worked with Bulldogs head coach Wes Johnson. Johnson, one of the most respected minds in the pitching world, was Skenes’ pitching coach at LSU and played a pivotal role in developing the Air Force transfer into one of the top pitching prospects in MLB history.
Late last offseason, Hopper and Pirates pitching coach Oscar Marin traveled to Athens, Georgia, to see the pitch in person. Their report was almost unbelievable.
“I remember hearing about it… that he threw something 95-96 that had a negative effect [vertical movement]”, Baker told Yahoo Sports. “Nobody’s ever seen that before.
“It was one of those situations where when I heard that about another player I thought, ‘Yeah, sure.’ But you hear it about [Skenes]and then you think, ‘Yeah, that’s probably true.’ And we got to see it when he showed up at spring training.”
Pirates catcher Henry Davis also saw early on how the field functioned in the off-season.
“It was more vertical than the changeup at times and more depth-y,” Davis told Yahoo Sports. “But this was when he was throwing it closer to 92-ish, like 92-94. He wasn’t all amped up, he just wanted to see how it would fill out the arsenal.”
According to Jeremy Bleich, assistant director of pitching, “The biggest thing is he had a vision for what it was going to be. Our staff maybe helped him get the last 5 yards.”
The end product is a pitch unlike any other: an offering with so much vertical movement that Statcast classifies it as a splitter. Yet it averages 94.1 mph and has touched 97 on multiple occasions. Based on velocity, the pitch — which Skenes calls a sinker — has already become the most effective offering in MLB this season, according to Statcast’s Run Value metric.
“It’s insane … one of the best things I’ve ever seen, obviously,” Davis said. “And he’s been a full-time pitcher for, what, two years?”
Indeed, it was just over two years ago that Skenes played his final game at the Air Force Academy before transferring to LSU. That game, a regional playoff against the University of Texas, featured Skenes catching and batting for the Falcons.
Once Skenes arrived in Baton Rouge, it quickly became apparent that his future lay on the mound. As soon as the swaggering hurler began competing in fall games, his new teammates began to understand the type of person and player who had joined their program.
Two of Skenes’ former LSU teammates — Nationals outfielder Dylan Crews and Rays first baseman Tre’ Morgan — were in Arlington, Texas, over the weekend to participate in this year’s Futures Game, featuring the minor leagues’ top prospects. In interviews with Yahoo Sports, neither expressed any surprise at Skenes’ meteoric rise to major-league stardom.
“When I was in college with him, I thought he was a big player who was going to start for a big team at that point,” said Crews, the No. 2 overall pick in last year’s draft. “He’s a special talent.”
Still, Morgan was surprised at how seamlessly Skenes’ dominance has translated to the highest level. “It’s amazing to see him do what he did in college — literally the same thing — against the best hitters in the world,” he said.
But Skenes isn’t quite the same pitcher he was a year ago. The splinker has refined his mix and made him a more formidable force, not just against the lefties he’s been trying to find a different answer for, but against righties as well. That wasn’t something he had last season, when he was tearing the college kids apart. That’s changed.
But again, the essence of Skenes — the determination, the fastball, the slider, the energy on the mound that’s reminiscent of a contented Rottweiler enjoying himself as he finishes off his opponents — is unwavering.
In addition, the searching introspection and constructive self-criticism are a big part of what makes Skenes generational. It would have been easy, even understandable, for him to rest on his laurels and stubbornly stick to the pitch mix that took him to outrageous heights in college. Many pitchers, baseball players, people in general, have to experience failure before they can admit that change is necessary.
Skenes did not.
“He wants to be – not [just] “He’s awesome,” Bleich said. “He wants to be the best.”
The present and future of the Pittsburgh Pirates adapted before he needed to, even before his bosses had a chance to say so. His willingness to evolve — and the strange physical aptitude for making a beautiful new field — made possible his meteoric rise and historic first 11 major-league starts.
“He could have struck out the best hitters in the Major Leagues with just a fastball slider,” Baker said, looking back.
“But I don’t know if he’s an All-Star.”