Skenes on the Rise: Stellar in His Second Major League Start

Paul Skenes and the Pittsburgh Pirates took on the Chicago Cubs for the second time in seven days. As good as he was in his first career start, today he took it to another level at Wrigley Field. The Pittsburgh Pirates have been getting great pitching from Jared Jones this season so far helping the Pirates to a 20-25 record heading into play today. The Pirates currently are seven games behind the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers and five games behind the second-place Chicago Cubs in the National Central Division. Paul Skenes is ITD’s number two overall prospect entering the year and has proven why with his first two starts for sure.

MLB DEBUT

On May 11th Skenes got his first Major League start of his career at home against the Chicago Cubs. He started the game off by getting Mike Tauchman to foul-tipped a ball into the catcher’s mitt for his first Strikeout of the big league Career and followed it up by striking out Seiya Suzuki finishing with two strikeouts in the first inning. He only worked four innings in his first start for the Pirates. He didn’t factor in the decision but allowed six hits, three earned runs, one home run, two walks, and seven strikeouts in his four innings of work. He finished the day with a 6.75 ERA and a 2.00 WHIP.

By the Numbers

During his first start he leaned on three pitches, his four-seam fastball 39.3%, slider 27.4%, and his split-finger 25% of the time. His four-seam fastball reached 100.1 MPH during his outing while his slider average was 85 mph with the split-finger at 94.7 mph. I can tell you for those who have yet to see any footage of the start that his split-finger coming in at that speed and with the run it has diving down out of sight at the last minute is a dangerous combo when you have a guy that brings it at 100mph regularly. His split-finger had 31.4 inches of drop vertically and 13.8 inches of break horizontally during the start. Again I am not sure how with a guy throwing that hard you attack a guy like this. He started the at-bat with Seiya Suzuki with the split finger on the inside corner, then threw a slider that started out of the zone aimed at his front leg broke into the zone at 85 MPH, and finished him off with a 100 mph four-seam fastball on the outside corner. The mindset and approach of this young pitcher is something that makes him even more dangerous. He has such confidence in his pitches that he will throw them at any time. He also has a changeup of 6% and a curveball of 2.4% that he used during his first start.