Paul Skenes bounces back vs. Padres
Yahoo Sports senior MLB analysts Jordan Shusterman and Jake Mintz break down Paul Skenes latest performance and wonder if this will spark a return to form for the Pirates pitcher. Check out the full conversation on the "Baseball Bar-B-Cast" podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
The Pittsburgh Pirates might be cooked.
Still six and a half games back, four games under .500 in the NL wild card race.
But Paul Skenes back, question mark?
Best start Skenes has had in a long, long time last night, allowing zero earned runs across six innings of work, and most importantly, his four-seam fastball averaged 97.2 miles an hour, his highest average in a game since May 28th.
He threw way more sinkers and fewer four-seamers than he usually does.
Are those things related?
I don't know.
It was the most Paul Skenes Paul Skenes has looked for months.
Did you see what he said about the velocity after the game?
No.
This is good.
This is p- good Paul Skenes joke.
He said, "Yeah, the gun must've been hot."
That is funny.
He was like, he, not only And then he said, he said, "Yeah, I mean, you know how hard Mason Miller throws.
I mean, gun must be pretty hot there."
so we- The idea of calling the StatCast gun hot is funny.
I like that.
First scoreless outing since May 12th for the guy whose ERA for his first 400 innings was, like, 1.9.
It has been a weird year for Paul Skenes.
This was very nice to see.
For the pi- for the Pirates to win a one-nothing game with Paul Skenes on the mound, like, he's, he, he kinda deserved some, an outing like that, right?
Like, this was This has gone wrong.
How- whatever they lost, you know, those 10 starts in a row, and a lot of that was his fault.
He wasn't pitching well.
This was nice to see.
I think if we are also gonna focus on the velocity, and he also did answer this, not just joking about the gun being hot.
He did reference feeling like his delivery's getting in a better shape, referencing flow, referencing.
And that is something that I speculated about when we've talked about Paul Skenes.
It's like, that's a big dude, and if not everything is working perfectly, yeah, maybe he is only gonna throw 96 instead of 98.
So while we can catastrophize and say, "Oh my God, he's definitely hurt," and maybe, maybe that's the case.
Who knows?
It's nice to see him just feel like, all right, I, I got back to where Now, he wasn't throwing 100 like he was as a rookie, so it's, let's not get too excited.
Yeah.
But it was still encouraging, and most importantly, he got good results and, and the Pirates won.
Not, not that we think the Pirates are suddenly back, but it was a good night for the, for the Pirates.
