It was during the 2023 NCAA tournament that LSU coach Jay Johnson knew. Knew how good a pitcher Paul Skenes would be once he got to the major leagues.
“During the postseason, he faced Kentucky in the super regional and Tennessee in the College World Series, the second time that he faced those teams,” Johnson said this week. “And he completely flipped on its head how he pitched them.
“I was like, ‘Man, this guy’s going to dominate in the major leagues.’ Like, there’s going to be no issue of facing somebody three times in a season.”
Skenes has proven Johnson as right about that as he was right to get the 6-foot-6 fireballer to transfer to LSU from Air Force.
Skenes has been a force in less than two full seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team that made him the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 MLB draft shortly after his MVP performance in the College World Series led the Tigers to that year’s national title.
After rocketing through the minor leagues, Skenes went 10-3 with a 1.96 earned run average in 2024 and stunned the baseball world by starting the All-Star Game for the National League en route to being named NL rookie of the year.
In 2025, Skenes was even more impressive. As the major league playoffs thunder on without Paul and the Pirates (71-91), his season deserves to be celebrated.
In his first full major league season, the big right-hander posted a 1.97 ERA, the first sub-2.00 ERA in the majors since 2022 (his ERA from 2024 doesn’t count because he was called up two months into the season). He set a Pirates franchise record with 216 strikeouts in 187-2/3 innings pitched. His WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched) of 0.95 was fourth-best in the majors, and his opponents’ batting average of .199 was sixth-best. On top of that, Skenes again was the National League’s starting pitcher in the All-Star Game.
After piling up such a glittering resume, Skenes poked fun at himself for his ERA having risen infinitesimally from 2024.
“Yeah,” he said last week after his season’s last start at Cincinnati, “I got a hundredth worse than last year.”
Skenes has arguably been one of the best young pitchers in MLB history, just the fourth in the so-called “live ball era” (since 1920) to have a sub-2.00 ERA at 23 or younger and the first to accomplish that since Dwight Gooden in 1985.
“He’s the best in the world,” Pirates first baseman Spencer Horwitz said. “I’ve said that time and time again, and he doesn’t disappoint.”
The only possible knock on Skenes in his pursuit of the NL Cy Young Award is his 10-10 record. He is the first pitcher since ERA became an official statistic in 1913 to have 200-plus strikeouts AND a sub-2.00 ERA and not finish above .500.
It is possible the major league beat writers who vote on the Cy Young — a notoriously nitpicky bunch — could hold that against him. But Skenes’ record is an indictment not of him but of the anemic run support the Pirates gave him throughout the campaign.
No less an expert than ESPN baseball writer Jeff Passan doesn’t believe Skenes’ record will be an issue.
“Paul Skenes is going to win the National League Cy Young unanimously this year,” Passan said late last month. “And deservedly so.”
There’s nothing Skenes can control about that, however. His domain is the mound, and it is there that he creates his own environment with a mix of exceptional skill and intense drive and dedication.
“It may be surprising to everybody in baseball or in the world” what Skenes has done, said Johnson, whose current Tigers begin fall practice next week. “But when you know Paul Skenes, it actually is not surprising to me. Not just because of the overwhelming talent, but I don’t think I’ve ever met a more committed, focused, attention to detail, driven athlete in all my life.
“He has done everything to take that ability and turn it into the skill of the best pitcher on the planet.”
We won’t know for sure that Skenes has won the NL Cy Young until sometime in November, after the World Series has concluded. Going forward, it will be riveting to watch whether the Pirates will try to build a winner around this generational talent. More likely, he will be shipping off to a bigger market team with deeper pockets once he can become a free agent, though that’s not until 2030.