It doesn’t take much to recognize that Paul Skenes is pretty good at what he does.
After another five scoreless innings Wednesday in Baltimore — an abbreviated outing intended to help manage his burgeoning workload for a last-place Pirates club — Skenes’ ERA sank to an MLB-best 1.92. It was the latest outing in what has been a spectacular sophomore follow-up to a rookie season that was historic by many measures.
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Skenes’ unparalleled display of run prevention now spans two seasons’ leaderboards: His career ERA of 1.94 in 311 innings is the lowest mark for any pitcher in MLB’s live-ball era (since 1920) through his first 53 starts. The National League leader in strikeouts (203), WHIP (0.92) and fWAR (6.2), Skenes is firmly on track to claim his first Cy Young Award after finishing third in his debut season.
Even if you had zero knowledge of his record-setting statistics, Skenes passes the eye test emphatically. Witness an inning or two of the 6-foot-6 right-hander at work, and you’ll be treated to elite velocity, sharp movement and a varied assortment of pitches that routinely befuddle the best batters on the planet.
All of it makes sense on the surface. But dig deeper into what really enables Skenes’ success, and it becomes clear that his raw talent is far from the only thing fueling this unrivaled start to a career. The Pirates’ ace thrives at the intersection of his profound physical ability and intense curiosity regarding his craft. And despite already being one of the greatest young pitchers the game has ever seen, the 23-year-old is still in the early stages of fully comprehending what he’s capable of.
‘I’m gonna see what I have, and I’m gonna pitch with it’
Pirates pitching coach Oscar Marin has learned the lingo Skenes prefers to use when discussing and describing how he’s feeling on the mound.
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“One of the biggest words he drives off of when he’s pitching,” Marin said, “is ‘feeling the flow.’ When he feels the flow is when everything feels synced up, feels connected. And when he feels the flow, it’s going to be a pretty good day.”
“It’s just my body. That’s all it is,” Skenes told Yahoo Sports when asked to define this phrase in his own words. “That’s my cue. It’s just the relationship, I think, between my upper half and my lower half.”
It’s a simple concept, albeit something of an amorphous one to an outsider. Skenes is hyper-aware of how his body is working every time he steps on the mound. He can tell when his mechanics and delivery are functioning as intended and when things are out of whack, and modern pitch-tracking technology offers objective measures for Skenes to monitor over the course of an outing. After an August start against Toronto, Skenes revealed that he regularly peeks at the PNC Park scoreboard — not just to see the velocity, as pitchers have done for years, but also to see exactly how much horizontal and vertical movement each of his pitches is exhibiting in real time.
“It’s telling me where my body is,” he explained afterward. “It’s the same thing as throwing a bullpen. I have video, but I also have the metrics. So it gives me some instant feedback during the game.
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“I’m dialed into my body. I really am. And over the course of 32 starts, or whatever it’s going to be, if I’m throwing 3,200 pitches, roughly, along with bullpens, I gotta be moving right.”
In addition to in-game checks, this kind of self-evaluation is paramount to Skenes’ preparation. Going into his Sept. 4 start against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers, things felt a bit off. In his verbiage: The flow was nowhere to be found.
“The pregame bullpen … was pretty tough,” he said. “It was terrible.”
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And once the game began, the first piece of data was discouraging.
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“My first pitch was 97 [mph]. I haven’t thrown a first pitch of the game 97 mph since I was in college,” he said. Indeed, his initial bolts had exclusively registered at 98 mph or above as a pro. It’s a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless.
“It’s gonna be a long day,” Skenes remembers thinking, with a loaded Dodgers lineup in his path and his best stuff seemingly eluding him.
And yet, that first offering — though “only” 97.3 mph — was swung through by Shohei Ohtani for strike one. By the end of the leadoff encounter, Skenes had thrown two more fastballs past the reigning NL MVP at 97.9 mph and 98.8 mph for strikes two and three. Skenes then used a sinker to get Mookie Betts to ground out and a changeup to induce a weak popout from Freddie Freeman, completing his dismissal of the MVP trio.
“I wasn’t synced up,” Skenes reflected. “And then I got out on the mound in the first inning, I was executing my stuff — not exactly the way I wanted it, but we were executing it still.”
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Slowly but surely, Skenes settled in and found his groove. Five more scoreless frames followed, helping the Pirates secure a surprise sweep of the Dodgers. Looking back, Skenes said his recent outings have charted a similar trajectory, hinting that his growing workload — Skenes has amassed 178 innings across 30 starts after throwing 133 frames in the majors last year — has impacted him to some degree, even if it hasn’t ultimately hindered his effectiveness.
“It’s been weird, and it’s kind of a pattern,” he said. “I think it’s just where we’re at in the year, feeling, like, sticky or out of sequence or something like that earlier in the game. And then it takes a little bit to find it.”
To wit: His first pitch Wednesday in Baltimore came in at 96.6 mph, and his four-seamer averaged 97.2 on the evening, a full tick down from his yearly average. But the decrease in heat did not prevent Skenes from putting up five zeroes on the scoreboard.
“It’s just the time of year where I’m gonna go out there, and I’m gonna see what I have, and I’m gonna pitch with it,” he said.
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After the game, Skenes conceded that it was sensible to cut the outing short based on how he has been feeling and trying to be in the best position to make his final few starts of the season. Skenes has already learned plenty since arriving in the majors; understanding the physical demands of sustaining excellence over the entirety of a season is simply his latest lesson.
Through 53 career starts, Paul Skenes has put himself on a Hall of Fame trajectory. (Joseph Raines/Yahoo Sports)
‘As long as it keeps performing, I’ll keep throwing it’
In many respects, self-discovery has defined Skenes’ supercharged journey to the top of the sport. His first two years of college baseball were spent as a two-way player at the Air Force Academy, initially as a catcher and closer before he transitioned to the rotation as a sophomore while continuing to slug. At that point, Skenes still viewed baseball as secondary to his military track; he was merely playing for fun.
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It wasn’t until he transferred to LSU and ditched the bat that his substantial potential on the mound started to crystalize, thanks in large part to the tutelage of pitching coach Wes Johnson (now the head coach at the University of Georgia). Even then, Skenes overwhelmed opponents using almost exclusively two pitches — a four-seam fastball and a slider — in his season with the Tigers en route to being selected No. 1 overall by Pittsburgh. Barely more than two years later, Skenes’ repertoire is seven pitches deep, mirroring a trend of expanded pitch mixes league-wide and underscoring his unwavering commitment to optimizing his arsenal.
As a rookie, Skenes seized headlines and dropped jaws with a pitch referred to as a “splinker” — an offering that features the mid-90s velocity commensurate with a sinking two-seam fastball but with a grip and enough vertical drop to also be considered a splitter. What was so remarkable about the pitch, which immediately rated as one of the best individual offerings in the league, wasn’t just its aesthetic absurdity but also the fact that Skenes developed it in the time between being drafted and making his major-league debut less than a year later.
That knack for innovation carried into Year 2. Skenes tinkered in spring training with adding a more traditional sinker and a cutter to an arsenal that had widened to six pitches in 2024, including three breaking-ball variations (curve, sweeper, slider) and a rarely used changeup. It felt like overkill to some, but there was a method to the madness. And while Skenes shelved the cutter before the regular season (for now, anyway), the sinker has become a staple of his high-octane attack.
“There’s a four-seam that stays true, and there’s a sinker that looks like a four-seam that just keeps running in … I think that just opens up the zone and buys him more real estate,” Marin explained. “It’s an outside heater that’s not straight. It’s an outside heater that starts as a ball and ends up as a strike.”
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In addition to giving Skenes another high-velocity pitch, the sinker’s movement amplifies the effectiveness of his breaking balls when targeting the outer half of the plate against right-handed hitters.
“I think it’s made his sweeper better and the slider better … It’s playing the X game on the other half, right? It’s just combo-ing pitches that look almost exactly the same. One’s gonna bite to the left. The other one’s gonna bite to the right.”
More recently, however, a different one of Skenes’ many pitches has taken center stage as his most intriguing weapon: the changeup. But unlike with the sinker, which Skenes intentionally introduced and has meticulously mastered, the changeup’s glow-up into a plus-plus offering has come as something of a surprise, even to Skenes himself.
“I don’t know what’s up with that pitch,” he admitted.
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He’s referring to the fact that the pitch’s velocity has suddenly spiked. After averaging 87-88 mph last season and the first four months of this season, Skenes’ changeup has averaged closer to 90 mph since the start of August.
“[The velocity] has been up the last couple outings,” he noted after throwing 15 changeups against the Dodgers, more than any of his other secondary pitches. The pitch maxed out at a career-high 91.9 mph to get Freeman out in the first inning and later fooled Dalton Rushing so badly that he flung his bat to the backstop.
“I don’t know exactly why it’s harder right now,” Skenes said. “But as long as it keeps performing, I’ll keep throwing it.”
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And to say the pitch is performing is an understatement: Skenes’ .093 wOBA allowed on his changeup is the single lowest mark for any individual offering thrown at least 200 times in 2025.
In a surprising twist, the uptick in changeup and sinker usage has lessened the presence of his once-renowned splinker, with its usage cut in half from 28% to 14% this season. Skenes insists these usage patterns are strictly the product of game-to-game circumstances, rather than any sort of purposeful change in pitch diet, but he acknowledges that how all his pitches function in concert with one another is a work in progress and something he’s constantly monitoring.
“We’re learning a lot about the changeup and splinker and how the relationship can be,” he said, “because we didn’t throw the changeup as much last year.”
As for the mystery of the changeup’s increased heat, Skenes is confident he’ll figure it out soon enough.
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“The biggest difference is just pitching with it differently,” he mused. “It comes down to knowing my stuff and knowing how to pitch with my stuff, no matter where it is.”
‘When you’re looking for the best pitch, and there’s four of them …”
While his arsenal continues to evolve in remarkable and unexpected ways, one thing has remained fairly constant throughout Skenes’ sophomore season: his catcher, Henry Davis. In April, Davis and Skenes became the first battery in MLB history consisting of two former No. 1 picks. Davis, the top selection in the 2021 draft, has not enjoyed anywhere near the immediate major-league success that Skenes has. But this year, while his offensive production has underwhelmed, Davis has established himself as an integral part of Pittsburgh’s run-prevention efforts. He has been excellent at controlling the running game, and Pirates pitchers have combined to post a 2.92 ERA with Davis catching, the second-lowest mark for any qualified catcher behind only the Padres’ Freddy Fermin (2.88 ERA).
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Most importantly, Davis has become Skenes’ preferred backstop. He did not catch Skenes once during his rookie season; that responsibility primarily belonged to veteran Yasmani Grandal, while Davis spent most of 2024 in Triple-A. But the top-pick duo has worked together behind the scenes since Skenes joined the organization, setting the stage for a partnership that is flourishing in 2025. After Joey Bart and Endy Rodriguez caught Skenes’ first four starts, Davis has gotten the nod in every outing since.
One key to their success: Each is similarly driven to do whatever it takes to win at the highest level.
As Skenes joked of Davis last month, “He’s probably the second-hardest worker in the building, if you know what I mean.”
With comparable determination and work ethic, the duo is constantly collaborating on Skenes’ adaptations between starts and his in-game plans of attack. The result is a notable amount of synergy for a battery in its first year together in the majors.
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“Rarely do you see Paul shake Henry off and go to something else, which is pretty impressive, given the pitch selection that Paul has,” Pirates interim manager Don Kelly said. “And I just think it speaks to Henry’s preparation — but also the trust and chemistry that Paul and Henry have together.”
Added Marin: “Catching him as much as he has, he’s going to be able to see different things at different moments, specifically during games, how stuff looks, how it doesn’t look. But one thing they do really well as a group, in between innings, there’s a lot of communication between both of them on how things are working or if they need to go off-script a little bit, depending on what they’re seeing.”
While his preparation and aptitude for calling games have become clear strengths for Davis no matter whom he’s catching, he is also fully cognizant of the specific luxury he enjoys every time it’s Skenes’ day to pitch.
“It’s obviously interesting calling a game for [Skenes], right?” Davis said. “He has so many weapons … Is this the best pitch for this moment? But you know, when you’re looking for the best pitch, and there’s four of them …”
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This sentiment might sound like hyperbole, but it’s supported by the data: With so many pitches performing at outlier levels, Skenes’ “best” pitch can vary with the outing. Beyond his breakout changeup, Skenes’ four-seamer has the fourth-highest Run Value of any pitch in baseball. His sweeper has the lowest hard-hit rate allowed on any pitch thrown at least 400 times in 2025. Ask Skenes himself what pitch’s development he has been most pleased with this year, and he’ll point to the sinker. But he hasn’t forgotten about his old favorite toy: Skenes threw his vaunted splinker (which Statcast now labels as a splitter) 20% of the time vs. the Orioles on Wednesday, wryly joking afterward that he just wanted to show everybody he still has it.
Even at such an early stage of his career, Skenes’ cerebral approach is readily apparent in the way he thinks and speaks about pitching. Yes, he studies scouting reports, with Davis helping craft game plans. And yes, he is especially in tune with how his motions on the mound influence how his pitches move. And yes, Skenes’ arsenal is constantly expanding and evolving based on which pitches are performing at their best.
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But at the end of the day, with stuff this good, it’s all about execution.
“I think when you get into pro ball, it’s a little bit intoxicating when you look at the numbers and the information available, and you want to be as prepared as you can be,” Davis said. But with a pitcher like Skenes, it’s also easy to lean on a mantra passed down to him by longtime Pirates backstop Jason Kendall.
“He said to me, for seven out of nine hitters, it’s going to be 95% about the pitcher’s strengths, 4% game situation, 1% hitter,” he said. Sure, there are exceptions when teams such as the Dodgers roll into town; certain stars require extra attention to detail. But even in those instances, Davis says, the calculus might just shift to 90% pitcher, 5% situation, 5% hitter.
It is this reality that empowers Skenes and Davis to focus so intensely on Skenes’ own capabilities, rather than worrying too much about how opposing hitters might try to counter. Because arguably no pitcher’s strengths are as varied and as imposing as Skenes’ — and if he throws the right pitches to the right spots, no hitter is likely to have much of a chance.
