The Skenes Show: Pirates phenom welcomes challenge of being baseball's newest superstar

Paul Skenes heard the PNC Park crowd chanting when he took the mound in the ninth inning, though the Pittsburgh Pirates phenom was so locked in that he couldn’t grasp the magnitude of the moment.

The rookie right-hander has captivated the baseball world since leading LSU to the College World Series championship and becoming the No. 1 overall pick of the 2023 MLB Draft, from throwing triple-digit fastballs to striking out Shohei Ohtani to a scoreless inning as the National League starter for the All-Star Game.

But he misunderstood the “M-V-P!” chants.

“I thought they were saying S-E-C, which confused me,” Skenes said sheepishly, after a 2-1 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday night. “I couldn’t tell what they were saying.”

The presence of 32,422 at the ballpark spoke volumes about how every start by Skenes has become a must-see event as baseball’s newest superstar. The attendance nearly doubled that of the Pirates’ previous Tuesday night home game, also against the Cardinals, which drew 17,701 on July 2.

“I try not to look at it or pay attention to it too much. You can’t really deny the people in the stands,” Skenes said. “But that’s the nice thing about LSU: pitching in those big games, those big atmospheres. The stadium’s bigger here — there’s a lot more people — but if the stadium’s full, the stadium’s full. That’s how I perceive it.”

That the stadium is full because of Skenes isn’t lost on the 22-year-old, who appears unfazed by the attention even though he welcomed the seven days of rest between starts to “get my feet back under me.”

As a reminder, Skenes signed for a then-record $9.2 million bonus July 18, 2023. A year later, his dominance is evoking memories of the sensational rookie campaigns of Mark Fidrych (24 complete games in 1976), Fernando Valenzuela (who led the majors in strikeouts and shutouts in 1981), Dwight Gooden (276 strikeouts in 1984) and Kerry Wood, who recorded a 20-strikeout game in 1998.

“I don’t see that stuff — I try not to look at it — but to whom much is given, much is required,” Skenes said. “So I think the cool part is it’s testing me as a man. Every time I go out there, for all of us, we’re trying to see what we’re made of, what our makeup is. That’s something a lot of people don’t see or don’t understand. But that’s where we’re at, just trying to see what I’m made of.”

Is Skenes up to the challenge?

“I’d like to think so, but every time I go out there it’s a test,” he said. “Every time I do anything in front of people, it’s a test. It’s cool to have that challenge, I think.”

So far, Skenes has passed every test with flying colors. Tuesday’s loss was the first of his career, and it didn’t come until his 12th start. The Cardinals game served as his 10th quality start and, by far, most efficient outing. Skenes threw 75% (78 of 104) of his pitches for strikes, including 24 first-pitch strikes and 10 called strikes. He required 11 pitches or fewer in five of his 8 1/3 innings, including a seven-pitch seventh.

Skenes also recorded eight strikeouts without a walk, extending his franchise-record string of starts with seven or more strikeouts to nine games. That tied the major-league rookie record set by Gooden in ’84 and equaled by Brandon Beachy in 2011.

Even when Skenes made a mistake, surrendering a solo home run to Nolan Arenado in the fifth inning, he never got rattled. Instead, Skenes responded by striking out the side in retiring the next 12 batters.

“I actually don’t know what it is. It’s just kind of innate. It’s in his DNA,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “He stays calm and executes his pitches. We really have not seen him get high or low. He’s stayed pretty consistent throughout all the outings.”

No wonder Shelton was reluctant to take too much credit for Skenes’ success, saying the best decision the Pirates made was taking him with the No. 1 overall pick. If anything, Shelton reasoned, the Pirates have managed not only the expectations for Skenes but his workload to prepare him to pitch in the majors.

“In terms of the stuff, we knew he had really good stuff. And it’s going to continue to refine,” Shelton said. “The thing I’m probably most proud of organizationally is we had a plan and we had a process when we drafted him, and we stuck to it. At times it was maybe controversial. It was definitely critiqued — especially earlier in the year — and I think we were very truthful in like, ‘Hey, we don’t know if we’re getting this right, but this is what we think is the best process for him.’ I think that’s the thing we’ve done the most. We stood by our process.”

Still, Skenes is mature beyond his years, from his advanced pitching repertoire and sequencing to his mental makeup. He shows no wide-eyed wonder about becoming an overnight superstar only two years removed from being a two-way player at the U.S. Air Force Academy, acting as if his success at LSU and with the Pirates is simply the result of a carefully cultivated plan that has come to fruition faster than anyone expected.

“That’s always been the goal: It’s every kid’s dream to play in the big leagues,” Skenes said. “To be in the big leagues is one thing. For it to be an event is another thing. That’s always been the goal. Again, going back to LSU, that’s how it was: It was an event for all three games of a weekend series.”

Now, Skenes has brought attention to Pittsburgh, where his electric pitching performances are drawing crowds chanting M-V-P for a pitcher whose youth and naivete thought it was S-E-C. With Skenes in a starring role, the Pirates will enter the trade deadline while entertaining the possibility of returning to the playoffs for the first time since 2015.

“It’s really cool. My dad texted me (Monday) night, and he basically just said, ‘You guys are fun to watch right now,’ and I wasn’t pitching in that game,” Skenes said. “We’re a good team, and I don’t think people realize that as much as they should. Obviously, the goal is for more people to see that, so I’m looking forward to that opportunity and that challenge.”

The bigger the better for The Skenes Show, which can expect stadiums to be full.