Paul Skenes' Rookie Season: A Promising Start to a Great Career
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00:00But in the overall five-game sample size of Paul Skeens' MLB career, Jack, what have you
00:05made of his debut in Major League Baseball?
00:08He looks immediately great, which is crazy and not something you ever say about any prospect
00:13like literally ever.
00:15But this guy comes up and you knew in college that 101 was going to play.
00:20You knew in AA last year, albeit he got roughed up in what, like an inning and two-thirds,
00:24that 101 was going to play.
00:27And you know, I knew in six, seven starts he made with AAA that 101 was going to play.
00:32And then he introduces new layers about himself.
00:36He shows us this splinker and opponents, he's throwing it 32% of the time, opponents are
00:42hitting 061 against that splinker, which is that splitter-sinker hybrid that is like coming
00:48out at 95 somehow because he's one of the very few humans on the planet that can make
00:53a pitch like that, do that at that speed.
00:58He's got multiple iterations of his slider.
01:00He is a much more layered pitcher than I think we ever really expected.
01:05And he added those layers before he got to the big leagues.
01:08And now that he's in the big leagues and he's all systems go, I think we're seeing like
01:12fully unlocked Paul Skeens.
01:14The crazy thing is this guy started pitching full-time last year.
01:20There's so much more maturation that can come from this guy.
01:23We could be seeing like a great, great career, maybe a Hall of Fame career get started right
01:29now.
01:30Like, I'm really impressed with what I've seen from Skeens.
01:33And also when you take a look at some of these players that translate from college baseball
01:37up to major league baseball, sometimes that transition doesn't happen early enough.
01:41We were screaming opening day, let's see Paul Skeens here.
01:44Now you take a look at his game yesterday, five innings pitch, six hits, three earned
01:47runs, eight Ks and one walk.
01:49His ERA now down to a three, which is very good.
01:51We take a look at his analytical numbers here.
01:54Very good as well.
01:55But my question to you is, moving forward, we saw him yesterday get over 90 pitches,
01:58which is probably the expectation, say a hundred to 90 pitches.
02:01Let's see where it goes.
02:02Do we have an innings limit during his rookie year that we're going to see here, Jack, in
02:06your opinion?
02:07It's tough.
02:08I would assume no, because of the way he started the season in AAA.
02:15He was on a firm innings and pitch count in AAA.
02:18And you can kind of approach that a couple of different ways.
02:22You know, I think Steven Strasburg, Matt Harvey, when we saw the innings limit that, you know,
02:27really made its way into major league baseball, that came at the end and it was a shutdown
02:31of Harvey and it was a shutdown of Steven Strasburg.
02:34And everybody was like, Hey, you know, they have a chance to fight for a postseason berth.
02:38Why can't we do this?
02:39You know, why can't they be a part of this?
02:41The thing that we're seeing more and more now is a suspension bridge type thing where
02:47you start at the beginning of the year, it's all systems go, and then you taper off your
02:53innings in the middle of the season.
02:55So late June, maybe to mid August, and then you ramp up again and join for that postseason
03:01push.
03:02I think the way to go about it, and I know that there are a lot of contenders that will
03:06use rehabbing pitchers like this, and a lot of contenders that will use young pitchers
03:10like this, is you almost delay their start when it comes to innings accumulation.
03:16They were lucky enough to be able to do that with schemes, right?
03:20And schemes, yeah, there were some things that I know he needed to work on in terms
03:24of the maturation process in AAA.
03:26Those took six, seven starts.
03:27It was also the ability to control his innings output.
03:32He's throwing 45 pitches, that he's throwing 45 more, that he's throwing 65.
03:36You can control that and then you can unleash him.
03:40When we get to August, September, I think you're going to start seeing him get over
03:43100 pitches, and you'll probably see that 110 pitch, 115 pitch outing August, September.