The Pirates gave Paul Skenes extra time to get right. On Wednesday it bought them 15 more pitches and not much else.
Skenes lasted 4⅓ innings and 81 pitches against the Tigers at PNC Park, allowing three runs on four hits and four walks while striking out five. Pittsburgh still took the game 4-3.
The right-hander had originally been slated to start Sunday against the Red Sox before the club moved him to the middle of the week. Manager Don Kelly said Skenes was not dealing with an injury and that the change was meant to give him “a few more days to recover.”
The velocity is back. The command isn’t.
There was one clear gain. Skenes threw 21 pitches at 97 mph or harder, up from a high-water mark of 96.5 mph in his previous outing, a 65-pitch effort against the Marlins on Aug. 11. The four walks, though, matched a season high.
“I think there’s been a lot of good,” Skenes said, according to MLB.com. “I think there’s some stuff, the walks. It’s frustrating. Nobody wants to go out there and walk anybody. Nobody’s trying to. … Felt good. Just a little out of sync, I guess, kind of the whole outing, which probably makes sense a little bit with the longer rotation. But nice to be back.”
A different season by his own standard
The 2024 National League Rookie of the Year and 2025 Cy Young winner carries a 3.95 ERA and a 1.14 WHIP across 139 innings this season. Set against the 1.96 ERA and 0.95 WHIP of his first two years, that reads like a slump; set against the league, it does not.
Infielder Brandon Lowe argued the expectations are the problem. “I think the world’s been spoiled on who Paul Skenes really is,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “He had probably the best starting stretch to a career ever. And now he’s not the greatest pitcher on the face of the planet for a few months, and people were worried and freaking out a bit.”
If Skenes finishes the year on schedule he should clear 200 strikeouts again, after 216 last season. He said his own read on the season will come from the numbers rather than the noise: “Just objective numbers, watching the game, execution, all that stuff. Not anything from the outside.”
Reporting in this story is based on game data and on quotes reported by MLB.com and the Associated Press, as compiled by the New York Post. The photographs are stock file images, not photographs of the events described.
