A year ago at this time, Paul Skenes was days away from being selected by the Pittsburgh Pirates with the No. 1 pick in the 2023 MLB draft after taking the SEC by storm at LSU. Going into the draft, I dubbed him the best pitching prospect since Gerrit Cole in 2011.
It's not that surprising that a pitcher with that level of talent could sail through the minors and immediately find success in the big leagues, and Skenes has done that. But improbably, after turning pro, Skenes learned one of the best pitches in baseball and has taken a big leap forward from even the ace-in-the-making who had everyone buzzing going into the draft.
I attended his most recent MLB start against the Atlanta Braves and spoke with him afterward to learn more about how he has been so successful so quickly.
Here is a pitch-by-pitch look at how Pittsburgh's 22-year-old phenom is dominating and an early answer to where he ranks among the best pitchers in the sport two months into his major league career.
4-Seam Fastball (38% usage, 99.2 mph)
Pitch Comp: Seattle Mariners closer Andres Munoz, but with a tick more velo, a tick higher release, and a tick better command, doing it for 100 pitches at a time
As you'd guess, Skenes' fastball is his most-used pitch and in keeping with current pitching trends, he throws it less than 50% of the time. The modern way to look at a fastball is by seeing if there's an approach-angle advantage and working backward from there. The prominent idea in the game is that there is some obvious stuff we can see about why a fastball would be good (velocity, command, etc.), but a deeper evaluation can tell if there are any tough-to-see traits that make the pitch play up in game situations.
Surprisingly, Skenes doesn't have a big plane advantage for a pitcher who is so elite at so many things. He is a massive 6-foot-6 righty who throws from a lower arm slot, so you'd expect his fastball to come in flatter than normal. His extension is a bit less than average (meaning he gets down the mound less, thus standing a bit higher), so his release point is about an inch or two below average. Because his arm slot is a bit lower than average, he doesn't get true four-seam backspin on the pitch, so there's more sink (about 3 inches) and arm-side run (about 7 inches) than the average right-handed four-seam fastball.
Skenes' big advantages are his league-best (among starters) 99.2 mph average velocity and his near-league-best rate of throwing it in the strike zone: teammate Jared Jones, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow and Seattle Mariners pitcher Logan Gilbert are the only starters who average 96 mph or better with a better in-zone fastball rate than Skenes. These standout elements make Skenes' heater an easy plus pitch -- I would go to a 65 grade on the 20-80 scale, and I think there's potential for even more with slightly better command.
While the plane (think of the view from the dugout) at which Skenes' fastball approaches the plate slightly suggests he should throw his fastball in the top of the strike zone, his standout velocity further pushes him in that direction because he can get a lot of whiffs and popups in that part of the zone, a fair trade for some long fly balls. That said, though the pitch is versatile enough to also use effectively low in the zone.
His fastball locations vs. lefty hitters are much more center cut than vs. righties, which could be random bad luck so early in his career, or maybe a slight adjustment/cue change is needed as he progresses. He throws his heater 43% against lefties vs. 34% against righties, so he's more vulnerable to bad fastball locations vs. lefties.
My theory is Skenes is trying not to hit batters (he has hit only one through 52⅓ innings), because he can locate glove side (away) vs. righties really well, but he has trouble hitting that exact same location against lefties (inside), in both cases clustering his misses away from both types of hitters, rather than to one side of the plate against both, which is what a persistent mechanical issue would look like.
For example, the only run he allowed against the Braves was a leadoff homer to Jarred Kelenic on a fastball in the high-and-away corner of the strike zone.
Jarred to the Chop House!#BravesCountry pic.twitter.com/5e4aKBzEMm
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) June 29, 2024
I asked him if that was the intended location or a miss: "You have to tip your cap to him. ... I did miss. ... [I was] trying to get it a little bit more in. At some point, whatever velo it was is usually going to beat hitters, he just got to it."
I also asked Skenes about some of the arm-side misses in his last start -- the red dot in the right of the two above charts, as it wasn't just in this game -- and he basically said that's where the pitch ends up when he's efforting too much to throw it hard.
Skenes dealt this day -- 6 innings, 6 hits, 1 run, 2 walks, 9 strikeouts -- and the only blemish came on something that I think he has the ability to make an adjustment on given his raw strike-throwing ability.
Splitter (31%, 94.2 mph)
Pitch Comp: San Francisco Giants starter Jordan Hicks' sinker, but with 6 inches more sink and much better command
It has become common for pitchers to add effective sinking (sinker, changeup or splitter) and cutting (cutter, slider, sweeper or two-plane curveball/slurve) options to complement their fastball. That's usually because a four-seamer coming from a standard high three-quarters slot can be arrow-straight; Skenes doesn't have that exact issue because of the arm-side run on the pitch that his slot helps create.
Skenes had a killer slider and decent changeup already when he was drafted, which left room to create a hard sinking pitch. He has now shelved the two-seamer he threw in college and pushed the changeup to the back burner in favor of his new pitch: a splinker; portmanteau of sinker and splitter.
Paul Skenes, Ridiculous 96mph Splinker. 🥴 pic.twitter.com/eWbZ6wGBRW
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 29, 2024
Skenes' new pitch has 2 inches more sink and 4 inches more arm-side run compared to the average right-handed splitter, while being (I'm yelling now) MORE THAN 8 MILES PER HOUR FASTER.
Looking at it from the other direction: Skenes' splinker is 1.6 miles per hour harder than the average sinker, with 7 inches more sink and the same lateral movement.
Hicks' sinker is the closest comp I could find to Skenes' new pitch as it has almost the same velocity and lateral movement, but Skenes gets 6 more inches of sink than Hicks does.
However you look at it, the pitch Skenes learned after becoming the best draft pitching prospect in more than a decade is a near-impossible, peerless pitch, while every other element of his game has been as good or better than expected. Simply ridiculous.
Paul Skenes, Splinker Release (Slow) pic.twitter.com/dECNpLjmzj
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 29, 2024
He does this by throwing the pitch off of his middle finger, rather than the index finger used for a typical sinker, while the split grip helps kill the spin (1760 rpm vs. the four-seamer 2301 rpm on average) which helps create sink. He didn't invent a new pitch grip/execution we've never seen before necessarily, but Skenes is definitely the best we've ever seen try it.
I asked Skenes if the new offering was related to his two-seam fastball he threw at LSU. "It's a different pitch altogether, the cue is a little bit different, throwing it off of a different finger," he said. I also asked when he learned the pitch: "It was after I got into pro ball. I think I figured it out after the College World Series and when I signed and started throwing it."
He tied up righties multiple times in his last start on down/in splinkers and he throws it in the same spot to both left-handed and right-handed hitters, so I combined them into one chart:
That shows his excellent control, again, throwing a power splitter (the hardest pitch to control behind a knuckleball) that he learned in the last year in a pretty tight band of spots. Baseball Savant has a run value number that measures the difference in expected runs after every pitch, from hits, outs, on down to the change in the count. If you account for Skenes missing the first part of the year while in Triple-A and look at the per-pitch run value (min. 250 pitches), his splinker is the best pitch in baseball this season.
He's still only throwing it 27% of the time to lefties, so I think that number could go up a lot without sapping its effectiveness, even as the league is now seeing it for the second time and making adjustments. I hesitate to call something an 80-grade pitch that has existed for about a year and has been thrown 269 times in the big leagues, but it's incredibly effective, has an unprecedented amount of velo and movement and he commands it well, so I think this has to be called an 80-grade pitch right now. Again, he learned it right after getting the biggest bonus in modern draft history.
Slider (16%, 84.9 mph)
Pitch Comp: Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Spencer Turnbull's slider, but 1.5 mph harder
I would think of Skenes' splinker as a turbo sinker rather than a true splitter and that means he is really throwing his two fastballs 69% of the time, leaning into his velo advantage and making hitters vulnerable to his offspeed offerings.
Skenes' slider was his go-to pitch to finish off hitters in college, but now he only uses it 23% of the time against right-handed hitters and 10% against lefties. He's trying to throw it in basically one location against righties, with some misses to either side of the target:
Because it has almost exactly MLB average slider velocity, it's not playing like a chase pitch with hitters unable to identify the pitch type or location and flailing helplessly. Because of his power fastball/splinker, plus control and above-average movement to his slider, hitters are making in-zone contact with the pitch at a well below-average rate. Pitches with above-average sweep (Skenes gets a few inches more lateral movement on his slider than MLB average) have big platoon splits, so using the slider against college lefties who really can't hit anything he throws, then pivoting to other options once in the big leagues makes a lot of sense.
While the slider isn't being used as often as it was in college, it's still a plus pitch, partly because he throws 100 mph and locates that pitch well, but that's who he is, so it's hard to disentangle them.
Curveball (11%, 82.3 mph)
Pitch Comp: Seattle Mariners starter Logan Gilbert's curveball, with less sweep and a tick less velocity
His curveball plays the breaking-ball role when Skenes faces lefties, with 14% usage against them and just 8% against righties. He throws it down in the zone to both sides of the plate. Skenes' outcomes after throwing this pitch 93 times in the big leagues are as good if not better than the slider, but I think this is more of an average-to-slightly-above pitch that plays up because of his command and the velo/movement profiles of the rest of his arsenal. Adding or tweaking pitches because of their interaction with the rest of your arsenal, rather than just getting the most velo or movement on their own, is the current frontier in pitching development.
Changeup (4%, 87.6 mph)
Pitch Comp: Raisel Iglesias' changeup, but a tick slower with a bit more sink and arm-side run
He has only thrown the changeup once to a righty this year, but used it 7% of the time against lefties. It has a bit more velo and movement than the average changeup, but he doesn't really throw it in the strike zone, mostly below with some locations off the plate to the arm side. I think this is another pitch that's average to a bit above on its own, finding success due to not being anticipated and playing above/below its grade because of the locations.
What it all means
Skenes has some of the best per-inning numbers of any starter in baseball this year, and you can pretty conveniently double the counting numbers to see what his numbers could be if he was up the entire year. (Since he'll be on an innings count, this was an intentional plan by PIttsburgh with hopes of having him available late in the season.)
While your impulse may be to say that Skenes will be worse over his next nine starts than he was over his first nine because the league will adjust to him, I'm not so sure that's the case. This is the best pitching prospect we've seen in some time, so precedent isn't as instructive as it might be for lesser prospects. Skenes learning the best pitch in baseball so quickly is not only an outlier trait and pitch, but the exact thing I didn't know he could do that made me hesitant to draft him (or any pitcher) first overall. If we don't know how well they adjust to failure or MLB hitters or if they will stay healthy, why not just take a hitter? Well, the answer may be Paul Skenes.
Skenes' raw stuff has been this good for almost two full seasons now, he has shown the ability to spot a weakness before failing on the field and creating a new 80-grade pitch to account for it, he has been as good or better than expected in every big moment or promotion, and I think his plus control could become plus command with some slight adjustments. It might be a little early to say he is the best pitcher in baseball right now, but he's clearly in the top five in my mind -- and I wouldn't argue with anyone who said he is already No. 1.