How Paul Skenes’ Splinker Propelled Him to Instant MLB Domination


ARLINGTON, Texas — The first thing Paul Skenes told the Pirates after signing was that he wasn’t good enough.

At least not yet.

It was late July 2023, and the brand-new No. 1 overall draft pick — fresh off one of the greatest seasons in college baseball history — was in Bradenton, Fla., for a meet-and-greet with his new employer. Skenes, director of player development John Baker and pitching coordinator Josh Hopper sat in Hopper’s office at the Pirates’ spring training complex.

Even the most optimistic predictions about Skenes couldn’t have predicted this future. Less than a year later, the 6-foot-6 pitcher is set to start Tuesday’s National League All-Star Game. He’s the first player to make the All-Star team the year after being selected first overall in the draft.

And those accolades are deserved: Skenes has taken MLB by storm, dominating hitters with a 1.90 ERA in his first 11 starts, capturing whiffs, imaginations and stares along the way.

But the road to professional stardom first crossed the Gulf Coast of Florida, where the three men met to sketch out a development plan. The goal of their meeting was obvious: figure out how to guide the most exciting pitcher of the last decade to major league dominance. Baker and Hopper came prepared with a series of suggestions, but asked Skenes to evaluate himself before sharing them.

“Without looking at our list, he listed (our recommendations) in exact order,” Baker, who conducts a similar meeting with every player who joins Pittsburgh’s minor league system, told Yahoo Sports. “Things he was thinking about himself. It’s the only time I’ve been in an environment like that with a new player.”

“And his list was more comprehensive than ours, and it was also more self-critical.”

One of the big items on Skenes’ agenda was adding a regular third pitch, which could help him better neutralize left-handed hitters. He incinerated every hitter in his first year at LSU — posting a 1.69 ERA in 122 2/3 IP with 209 strikeouts and a .449 OPS allowed — but he did it by relying almost exclusively on a two-pitch combination, fastball and slider. The mustachioed flamethrower has flashed a quality changeup at times, but he told Baker and Hopper he wanted something different, something better, something that could fool the best hitters on the planet.

And so Skenes set to work, creating and tinkering with what would become known as the “splinker,” a unicorn with the speed of a lead and the vertical depth of a splitter. It’s a cheat code that allows bullets to be stolen and dropped, and it helped make Skenes a superstar.

Developing such an effective field in such a short time illustrates just how unique Skenes is. Only someone with his rare combination of athletic ability, competitive intensity, work ethic and intellectual humility could have learned and deployed such an offering.

Skenes made the splinker, and in turn, the splinker made Skenes.

While Skenes played with the field in his brief five-start professional debut last summer, Pirates management didn’t see the field in person until late last winter.

Sources tell Yahoo Sports that Skenes spent part of last offseason at the University of Georgia, alongside Bulldogs head coach Wes Johnson. Johnson, one of the most respected minds in the pitching world, was Skenes’ pitching coach at LSU and played a crucial role in developing the Air Force transfer into one of the top pitching prospects in MLB history.

Late last offseason, Hopper and Pirates pitching coach Oscar Marin traveled to Athens, Georgia, to see the field in person. Their rapport was borderline unbelievable.

“I remember hearing about that … that he was throwing something 95-96 that had negative vertical movement,” Baker told Yahoo Sports. “Nobody’s ever seen that before.”

“It was one of those situations where if I hear that about another player, I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s true.’ But when you hear that about Skenes, you’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s probably true.’ And we saw that when he showed up for spring training.”

Pirates catcher Henry Davis also saw early renditions of the pitch during the offseason.

“There was more verticality at times than the changeup and more depth,” Davis told Yahoo Sports. “But it was at a point where he was throwing the ball closer to 92, like 92-94. He wasn’t fully launched yet, just seeing how it could complement the arsenal.”

Jeremy Bleich, assistant pitching director, said: “The most important thing is he had a vision of what it was going to be like. Our team helped guide him the last 5 yards.”

The finished product is a pitch unlike any other: an offering with so much vertical movement that Statcast classifies it as a splitter. Yet it averages 94.1 mph and has touched as high as 97 on multiple occasions. On a rate basis, the pitch — which Skenes calls a sinker — has already become the most efficient offering in MLB this season, according to Statcast’s Run Value metric.

“It’s crazy… it’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen, obviously,” Davis said. “And he’s been a full-time pitcher for, what, two years?”

In fact, just over two years ago, Skenes played his final game at the Air Force Academy before transferring to LSU. In that game, a regional playoff game against the University of Texas, Skenes played catcher and cleanup hitter for the Falcons.

Upon arriving in Baton Rouge, Skenes quickly realized his future lay on the mound. From the moment the swaggering pitcher began pitching in fall games, his new teammates began to grasp the type of person and player that had joined their program.

Two of Skenes’ former LSU teammates — Nationals outfielder Dylan Crews and Rays first baseman Tre’ Morgan — were in Arlington, Texas, over the weekend to take part in this year’s Futures Game, which featured the top prospects in the minor leagues. In interviews with Yahoo Sports, neither expressed any surprise at Skenes’ meteoric rise to major league stardom.

“When I was in college with him, I thought he was a major league player who would be a starter on a major league team at that point,” said Crews, the No. 2 overall pick in last year’s draft. “He’s a special talent.”

Still, Morgan marveled at how Skenes’ dominance has translated to the highest level. “It’s awesome to see him do what he did in college – literally the same thing – against the best hitters in the world,” he said.

But Skenes isn’t quite the same pitcher he was a year ago. The splinker pitcher has refined his blend and made him a more formidable force not only against lefties, for whom he was looking for another answer, but also against righties. That’s not something he had last season, when he was carving up college kids. That’s changed.

But the essence of Skenes — the determination, the fastball, the slider, the energy on the mound that resembles a contented Rottweiler having fun while he devours his opponents — is unwavering.

Beyond that, introspection and constructive self-criticism are a big part of what makes Skenes a generational player. It would have been easy, even understandable, for him to rest on his laurels and stubbornly cling to the pitching mix that propelled him to outrageous heights in college. Many pitchers, baseball players, and people in general, must first experience failure to recognize that change is necessary.

Not Skenes.

“He doesn’t just want to be great,” Bleich said. “He wants to be the best.”

The present and future of the Pittsburgh Pirates adapted before he needed them to, before his bosses even had a chance to tell him. His willingness to evolve — and his uncanny physical ability to create a beautiful new pitch — allowed him to rise quickly to his historic first 11 major league starts.

“He could have struck out major league hitters with just a fastball and a slider,” Baker said, looking back.

“But I don’t know if he’s an All-Star.”



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