The Paul Skenes Project

According to Erik Erikson, the main task of adolescents is to solve the crisis of identity versus role confusion.

Day 13 Of The 2025 MLB Season
Through five innings against the Cardinals on April 8, Paul Skenes had struck out six batters, walked none, allowed four hits and—because those hits were all bunched together in the same inning—he was trailing 3-1. He had thrown 75 pitches, and was facing the middle of the order for the third time.

Play along with Pirates manager Derek Shelton: Reliever time, or leave Skenes in?

Shelton leaves Skenes in. Obviously, I’d say. Obviously, you probably said.

Brendan Donovan doubles on a 1-0 pitch. It’s smoked — 106 mph. Pitch count is 77 and a runner is in scoring position. Leave him in or take him out?

Shelton leaves him in. This feels normal.

Nolan Arenado works a full count and then walks. The final pitch is way outside and gets past the catcher, with Donovan going to third on the wild pitch.

Runners at the corners with nobody out; Skenes’ pitch count is 83. The infield playing in. Leave Skenes in or take Skenes out?

Shelton leaves him in. I think this feels normal.

Next hitter, Alec Burleson, singles on the first pitch. The ball is not crushed, but the pitch wasn’t great: A curveball left in the upper-middle part of the strike zone. Fourth run scores, Arenado makes it to third base:

Three straight runners have now reached, runners are at the corners again, still nobody out, and the infield moves back. Skenes’ pitch count at 84. Leave him in, take him out?

Shelton leaves him in. I don’t disagree with the move, but this feels like the point when many or most starting pitchers get yanked, even if they have 10 or 15 more throws in their arm.

Jordan Walker comes up. He fouls off a couple pitches, works the count full, and finally strikes out on a nasty sinker that runs a foot inside.

Eight pitches in that at-bat, 17 in the inning, 92 in the game, runners still on the corners but with one out. In or out?

To give you a recent, similar comparison: On April 21, Nick Lodolo started the sixth inning having allowed three runs (like Skenes) and trailing (like Skenes) and having thrown 81 pitches (much like Skenes). He allowed two of the first three batters to reach, then after an extended at-bat he got an out (like Skenes). That is when the manager came out for him—5 2/3 innings, 99 pitches.

• Median Starter in 2025: 88 pitches, 22 batters faced, 16 outs recorded

• Skenes, to this point: 92 pitches, 24 batters faced, 16 outs recorded

But Shelton leave Skenes in. Pedro Pagés grounds out on a 2-1 fastball, driving in the fifth run of the game and moving the trail runner Burleson into scoring position. (It’s the first time in Skenes’ career he has allowed five runs.) Pitch count is 96.

Shelton leave him in. On the second pitch, Michael Siani lines out to left field and the inning is over.

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There’s nothing shocking about any of Shelton’s decisions—98 pitches is still safely within pitch count norms, even for young pitchers and even in early April—but I started to feel a prickly surprise that Skenes was still in. That’s not to suggest it was bad but just that it felt unexpected that Skenes got the full inning, trailing in the game, without his A stuff, deep into the lineup for the third time, and past the pitch-count and innings thresholds when most modern starters are considered batter-to-batter.

The Pirates aren’t going to be good this year—or next—or maybe the next—and it’s obvious that their primary project right now is somehow setting up Paul Skenes to still be incredible in 2027 or 2028, when they might be competitive and Skenes will still be under club control. One theory for how best to do that would be to, as the old metaphor used to go, “save his bullets.” If a pitcher only has so many bullets before the arm breaks down, then this metaphor suggests using as few of them as you can before the pitches really start to matter. In this scenario, maybe you’re trying to find a way to keep Skenes at 80 pitches as often as possible (see: Garrett Crochet last summer) and maybe find excuses to keep him at 26 starts this year instead of 32.

The Pirates and Skenes don’t seem to think in that metaphor. It really seems that the project this year is the opposite: It’s to use Skenes as a workhorse.

There are 59 pitchers who have made five starts this year, and he’s one of only five who have thrown 90+ pitches in all of them. He’s one of only two pitchers who have thrown 94+ plus pitches every time out, and the only pitcher so far who has thrown 98+ pitches in four starts. He’s one off the major-league lead in total pitches thrown this year.

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The point of this, in my speculation, isn’t to set Skenes up to get two extra outs per start this year, or in three years, but to keep him healthy. Throwing less hasn’t done anything to keep pitchers healthy. A better strategy is probably throwing with less effort.

If the Pirates “saved his bullets” by having him throw 80 or 90 pitches per start, he might just throw those 80 or 90 pitches even harder, putting more strain on his tendons and ligaments. By letting Skenes be a horse, the Pirates send him into every start with an energy-preservation mindset instead of an energy-maximization mindset.

There’s some evidence to suggest that Skenes is moderating his velocity this year. He hasn’t thrown a pitch 100 mph yet this season; he threw exactly 100 such pitches in the majors last year, topping out at 102. All of his pitches except his changeup are slightly down in velocity so far this year.

It’s possible that Skenes’ velocity is down because, well, velocity tends to go down, usually against pitchers’ wishes. But several pre-season features on Skenes noted that his emphasis this year was on durability and stamina—on prioritizing a good career over a good season or a good game, as Randy Johnson put it.

This spring, Jacob deGrom talked about throttling back his superhuman velocity in an effort to prevent injury—to trade stuff for health, a tradeoff the modern game has mostly disincentivized:

"I have to look at it like, hey, I can pitch at that [lower] velocity," deGrom said. "It is less stress on your body. You get out there and you're throwing pitches at 100 miles an hour for however many pitches it is -- it's a lot of stress. It's something that I'm going to look into -- using it when I need it, backing off and just trusting that I can locate the ball."

Skenes might just be 14 years ahead of deGrom in making that calculation for his own career. Thus far, his season has veered from last in some significant ways: He’s throwing more pitches in the strike zone and batters are swinging at a higher percentage of those strikes, suggesting they see those pitches as somewhat more hittable. They’re putting a higher percentage of those swings in play, suggesting they’re somewhat right. For a normal pitcher, these would be negative indicators. But Skenes is so much better than the average hitter that he seems able to dominate most situations without rearing all the way back.

As an analogy, I think back to this 2-1 swing by Skenes’ teammate, Oneil Cruz, earlier this year: Hitter’s count, fastball comes in dead red, and Cruz swings out of his helmet:

A swing that hard in a sell-out-for-power count is arguably the right approach for most hitters, but Cruz is so strong, so gratuitously strong, that he’s giving up something important (bat control) for something that he doesn’t really need (an extra 85 feet on the home run tracker).

To move the analogy to Skenes: Most pitchers might actually need to throw at maximum effort all the time to survive in this era of baseball. As Gerrit Cole put it: “With the avenue out there to reach those maximum potentials quicker, the industry demands—the teams demand—almost a higher level of performance and, to a certain extent, an unsustainable level of performance.” You can understand those incentives. But Skenes is gratuitously good. He probably doesn’t need to reach for maximum.

He’s striking out three fewer batters for nine this year. He’s not throwing quite as hard, he’s not getting quite as many whiffs. His FIP is still the sixth-best in the majors, and it’s even more certain than it should have been two months ago that he’s the best pitcher in baseball, as long as he stays healthy.¹

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Day 14 Of The 2025 MLB Season