PNC Park, Pittsburgh (MLB #13 - The Phenom, Paul Skenes)

 

This evening, we watched a “phenom” pitch.

Paul Skenes is a 22-year-old who has had a phenomenal start to his career. Among other things, he was the National League’s starting pitcher in last week’s All-Star game, a rare honor for a rookie. Coming into tonight’s game, he had started 11 games in his career (other than the All-Star game), hadn’t lost any, and in the last six, had pitched at least innings, struck out at least eight batters, and walked no more than two in each of those games. In his last start, he didn’t allow any hits through seven innings, but was pulled by the Pirate coaching staff because he had already thrown 99 pitches, and they didn’t want him injuring his arm.

It’s the most hype around a rookie pitcher that I can remember in 15 years, and it’s fun to watch, both because he is pitching very, very well, and because every time he pitches, it’s an event. Tonight, Pittsburgh had 32,422 in attendance for a weeknight game, nearly 10,000 more than their average. The most common jersey in the crowd was Skenes’ number 30, and many in the crowd sported fake mustaches like his. More about the game later, but suffice it to say that he didn’t disappoint, and the crowd may well be bigger the next time he pitches.

But how long will it all last?

The rookie pitching star, a kid who is not yet 23 years old but is mowing down major league hitters, is not a new thing in baseball.

·       The first one I remember was Mark Fidrych, with the Detroit Tigers in 1976. He didn’t have as much hype as Skenes for his first appearance, but within a few weeks, he was a national phenomenon. In his part it was his animated personality – he’d talk to himself, talk to the ball, smooth the mound with his hands – and in part it was because he was dominating hitters. Like Skenes, he started the All-Star game. He won the American League’s Rookie of the Year award that year, and finished second in voting for the Cy Young award as the league’s best pitcher.

·       Fernando Valenzuela was sensational in his rookie year, 1981. Like Skenes, he had the hype from the start, pitching an outstanding game on Opening Day. He won the National League’s Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young awards, and led the Los Angeles Dodgers to their first World Series win in 16 years. In part because he was by far the most successful Mexican-born player in the MLB (I’d argue he still is), he spawned, “Fernandomania,” with average attendance up by 9000 people every time he pitched.  

·       Dwight Gooden didn’t have quite the hype at the start of his rookie season for the New York Mets in 1984, but he kept getting better for the next year and a half, and was clearly the dominant pitcher in baseball in 1985, when he was 20 years old.

·       Kerry Wood came up as the great hope for the long-suffering Chicago Cubs in 1998. In his fifth start, he struck out 20 batters and allowed only one hit. Despite missing a month of the season due to injury (that’s foreshadowing, incidentally), he was the Rookie of the Year.

·       The most recent pitching phenom with the level of hype of Skenes was Stephen Strasburg, who retired this year, and it’s Strasburg’s story I keep thinking of when watching Skenes.

Neither the Washington Nationals, nor their predecessors, the Montreal Expos, had appeared in a World Series in the 40 years of the franchise’s existence by 2009. In fact, they had MLB’s worst record in 2008, which gave them the honor of the overall first pick in the 2009 draft of amateur players. They selected the player who was the consensus best player available, Strasburg. In fact, Strasburg’s agent, Scott Boras, claimed that he was a once-in-a-generation talent. Ironically, the Nationals were bad enough to have the first pick again the next year, and the consensus best player available was another player represented by Boras, Bryce Harper, who Boras also billed as a once-in-a-generation talent (I guess generations didn’t last very long then). Harper, a hitter, has had a more successful career than Strasburg, though with less hype.

Strasburg didn’t sign a contract in time to play in 2009 (negotiating with Boras has never been easy), but pitched a few dominant games each at the AA and AAA minor league in early 2010 before making his MLB debut on June 8, 2010. In what was billed as “Strasmas,” he lived up to, or exceeded, expectations, striking out 14 Pittsburgh Pirate batters. Few pitchers ever have a game in their career where they strike out 14, much less their first game. In fact, Strasburg had exactly one game in his decade-plus career where he struck out more than 14. He continued to excel as a rookie, but only started 12 games before suffering a season-ending injury that required “Tommy John” surgery. Like all the other phenoms I listed, he was less than 23 years old.

Strasburg missed almost all of 2011 recovering from the surgery, then pitched well in 2012 before the team shut him down late in the season. The Nats had said that they didn’t want to have Strasburg go beyond a certain number of innings pitched, to avoid reinjuring his arm. Personally, I thought that if they were going to take that approach, they should have backed off earlier, and saved some of those innings in case they made the playoffs, which they did. But they made their decision, got into the playoffs, and got beaten early. The rest of his career, he was always considered the ace of the Washington pitching staff, but only finished in the top 10 in voting for the National League Cy Young Award three times, never higher than third.

In 2019, though, he led the league in innings pitched, and then was dominant in the post-season – no holding back, as the Nats had done in 2012. Strasburg was selected Most Valuable Player of the World Series, which the Nats won, their first (and so far, only).

After the season, Boras negotiated a new long-term contract for Strasburg with Washington, seven years at an average of $35 million per year. Five years into that contract, he retired, having thrown a total of a few hundred pitches (i.e., about $500 thousand per pitch). Was it worth it for the Nationals? Stephen Strasburg wasn’t the best pitcher of his generation. He wasn’t even one of the best two pitchers in his league (one of the two major leagues) in any single season of his career. But in one magical season in which they were one of the few teams who reached the post-season with a chance to win it all, he probably had the best month of his career, and they won the World Series. That is a once-in-a-generation occurrence (rarer than that for the Nats franchise, once in 65 years so far).

Who was the best pitcher during Strasburg’s career? Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, and Justin Verlander each won three Cy Young awards, and each finished in the top five almost every year of the 2010s. I won’t try to choose between them, but I bring them up to demonstrate what the start of a once-in-a-generation (or at least, once in a decade) career might look like. Kershaw and Verlander were not particularly impressive their rookie seasons, but they were good enough to stay in the majors, and they got better quickly. I remember Scherzer’s because he was pitching for the Diamondbacks, in a game I was watching on TV. With little hype, he came in as a relief pitcher in the middle of an otherwise unmemorable game, pitched to 13 batters, and got them all out, most by strikeout. At the time, no one in MLB history had pitched to as many hitters at the start of his career before allowing a baserunner, and I don’t think anyone has done it since. Thought he showed other flashes of brilliance, he was inconsistent in his two years with the Diamondbacks, got traded, then started improving, and ended up with a spectacular career.

What about those other phenoms?

Fidrych flamed out with a shoulder injury in his second year.

Valenzuela finished in the top five in voting for the Cy Young Award three more times in the next four years. Although he played another decade after that, he was never as good as his first season.

Gooden played another decade, and was occasionally dominant, but he had the ill-fortune to come into the majors at a time when cocaine use was common, on a team full of older players who partied hard, and suffered substance abuse problems the rest of his career and beyond.

Wood, like Fidrych and Strasburg, quickly ran into arm troubles. Like Strasburg, modern surgeries kept him in the majors another 10 years, but never again near the level of his first few starts, and never even at the level of Strasburg.

How good will Paul Skenes be?

Tonight he pitched an excellent game. We’ll see about 50 games this year, and his maybe be the best start we’ll see. It was almost as good as the no-hitter we saw Tyler Gilbert pitch in his first, and by far best, major league start in 2021. Gilbert, incidentally, though a rookie, was not a phenom – he was 27 years old when he made it to the majors, and while he’s still pitching in AAA, he has been the winning pitcher in only one other MLB game.

Going into the 9^th inning tonight, Skenes had thrown about 90 pitches, and had allowed the Cardinals a  grand total of two baserunners, an infield single, and a home run that barely cleared the fence. He’d struck out eight, and I don’t believe he ever came within a pitch of walking anyone. However, the Pirates didn’t generate much offense, either, and didn’t get their first run until the bottom of the 8^th inning. So it was a 1-1 tie.

Knowing that he’d been taken out of the game with a no-hitter going in his last start, the crowd went nuts when he came out to pitch the 9^th. But the first hitter sliced a ball down the left-field line, and barely beat the throw (it took a replay challenge to confirm it) to get a double. Now, not only was Skenes approaching 100 pitches again, but he was pitching to the top of the Cardinals’ order for the fourth time. But they left him in, and he got the next hitter out. The next hitter, though, Alec Burleson, lined a solid single to score the run. Skenes was finally pulled, perhaps a few pitches too late. The Pirates went quietly in the bottom of the 9^th, so they lost 2-1, with Skenes as the official losing pitcher for the first time in his career.

Watching him pitch one game, Skenes looks like the real deal, and it was truly a joy to behold. But given the track record of phenoms, I fear for him. Maybe he’ll last 10 years, or slightly more, like Strasburg, Wood, Gooden, or Valenzuela. Maybe he’ll burn out quickly, like Fidrych. But chances are that the person who ends up being the best pitcher to debut in the mid-2020s will be someone like Scherzer, Kershaw, or Verlander, a kid who has flashes of brilliance mixed with long stretches of inconsistency.