Pirates' Paul Skenes Impresses Yankees Manager
Paul Skenes took the baseball world by storm with one of the best seasons by a rookie pitcher in Pittsburgh Pirates and MLB history.
Among the plethora of people impressed by the 2023 No. 1 overall pick was New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone. Along with Skenes' stuff, how he manages to make things look easy grabbed the longtime Yankees manager's attention.
“Pretty dynamic," Boone said. "The ease with which he does it, you don’t feel like he’s max-effort out there. It’s just easy velocity that he can step on the four-seam, sinker, change speeds on you really well. Because he does it with ease, it lends itself to him having real good command with it.”
Skenes dazzled in his limited work against the Yankees, pitching two shutout innings and striking three batters on just 23 pitches in the Pirates' 9-4 win on Saturday at Yankee Stadium. Two of Skenes' three strikeouts came against All-Star right fielder Juan Soto and Aaron Judge, the favorite to win the AL MVP for the second time in his career.
With a 1-2 count and one out in the bottom of the first inning, Skenes got Soto looking with a 100-mile-per-hour fastball for his first strikeout of the day. One batter later, Skenes found himself in another 1-2 count against Judge and got the 6-foot-7 slugger to chase a slide outside of the zone to end the inning.
Juan Soto, Aaron Judge, meet Paul Skenes.@Pirates pic.twitter.com/szp2ZYUA96
— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) September 28, 2024
Fittingly, on Skenes' final pitch of the 2024 season, he struck Jazz Chisholm out looking on a front door 100 mph heater.
This was the final pitch of Paul Skenes' rookie season ...
— MLB (@MLB) September 28, 2024
Absolutely incredible pic.twitter.com/sWmIMmvkE4
Skenes finished his rookie season 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA and he struck out 170 batters over 133 innings pitched.
“Glad to be able to finish the season and cool to do it here, cool to do it against this lineup.," Skenes said. "Wish I could keep going, but that’s where we’re at. I like New York. The Stadium is one of the destinations in baseball [and it's] a place to cross off your bucket list. Cool to be out there and pitch. Definitely going to keep checking it out tomorrow.”
