Connect with us

Published

on

OVER THE WINTER, as the Pittsburgh Pirates considered how to unleash the best pitching prospect in a generation on the baseball world, they landed on a plan with which they felt entirely comfortable and positively uncomfortable. No matter how well-thought-out the steps, how sound the logic, how reasoned the process, the success of a pitcher hangs in the balance. Even if a team does everything right, it still can go very, very wrong.

For the last month, Paul Skenes, the subject of all the planning, has carved up Triple-A hitting. His long-awaited debut in Pittsburgh is imminent, with the Pirates announcing he will start Saturday against the Chicago Cubs, and Skenes will arrive with a bullet train full of hype. He went to the Pirates with the No. 1 overall pick in last year’s draft, the deepest in recent memory. He is capable of doing things with a baseball unlike any man before him: No starter in the big leagues ever has thrown as consistently hard as Skenes.

None of that hoopla factored into Pittsburgh’s approach to his 2024 season, but the alarming rate at which it has watched the game’s best pitchers hit the injured list certainly did. The Pirates didn’t want to rush the right-hander — and they didn’t want to hold him back, either. They loved everything about him — except for all of the things they couldn’t know. They drew a roadmap they hoped would bring out the best in him — and acknowledged they had no clue whether it would succeed.

“I don’t claim that we have any sort of scientific master formula for how we’re doing this,” Pirates general manager Ben Cherington said. “I don’t know for sure that this plan is right. I can’t say that.”

If we judge Skenes’ success on outcome over process, all has gone according to plan. Skenes has been everything he’s supposed to be: 6-foot-6 and 235 pounds of dominance, with an average fastball of 100 mph and four other pitches with which he befuddles hitters. Less than a year out from a College World Series appearance, he has a 0.99 ERA with 45 strikeouts in 27⅓ innings for Triple-A Indianapolis this season.

The Pirates, though, understand that results-oriented analyses are inherently flawed. And while they found no comfort in managing the future face of their franchise with what amounts to an educated guess, they were able to take solace in at least one thing: When it comes to following a plan, Skenes has plenty of experience.


WHEN HE ARRIVED at the Air Force Academy in 2021, Skenes did not appear on any list to be the next great major league pitcher for a good reason: He was a catcher. As a freshman, he hit .410/.486/.697 with 32 extra-base hits in 188 at-bats. He was also the Falcons’ closer, notching 11 saves and showing enough acumen to go full Ohtani as a sophomore, starting 15 games on the mound and spending the rest of the time behind the plate.

Schools around the country took notice. Skenes entered the transfer portal and drew widespread interest. While some teams wanted him as a two-way player, LSU recruited him strictly to pitch. It appealed to Skenes, as did the Tigers’ pitching coach, Wes Johnson, who had parlayed a successful college coaching career into the Minnesota Twins’ major league pitching coach job before returning to the amateur ranks with LSU.

“He knew what he needed to do, but he didn’t know how. He was hunting the how,” Johnson said. “We got in there, and from his diet to learning a slider, we helped him figure that out.”

Deeply thoughtful and impressively methodical, Skenes gobbled up the knowledge offered by Johnson — in some cases literally. Typically, a pitcher throwing with the force of Skenes burns about 5,000 calories a game. To combat the energy drain of pitching, Johnson suggested Skenes supplement his diet with shots of honey.

“Paul would go through half a bear a game,” Johnson said.

Skenes needed the pick-me-up to execute what he was trying to pull off: surviving a jump from the Mountain West Conference to the SEC, the best college baseball conference in the country. Even more important than his dietary changes — which allowed him to maintain his weight during the season, a rarity — were the efforts to help Skenes start throwing an effective breaking ball. He had thrived at Air Force with a fastball-changeup combination, but SEC hitters would pummel him without an effective spinner. He spent the winter working with Johnson on a slider, and scouts who went to see Skenes in Baton Rouge emerged suggesting something that once seemed inconceivable: He might be good enough to steal the top spot in the amateur draft from his teammate, outfielder Dylan Crews.

Skenes spent the coming spring proving those scouts prophetic. Over 19 starts, he threw 122⅔ innings and struck out 209 against 20 walks. In less than two years, he had become the most polished pitching prospect in a decade. All season, Skenes balanced otherworldly performance with an insatiable desire to learn more. Even as the slider emerged as an elite pitch, Skenes, after one particular start, told Johnson that while it was good enough to get out college hitters, it wouldn’t have played in the big leagues.

“He’s not hard on himself,” said Johnson, now the head coach at the University of Georgia. “He’s just really good at self-evaluation.”

At one point during the season that would end with Skenes winning the College World Series’ Most Outstanding Player for the national champion Tigers, he asked to meet with Johnson to assess his progress. During the conversation, Johnson said, Skenes seemed to finally realize what would soon become clear to anyone watching him.

“I don’t mean this to be arrogant,” Skenes said. “I think the only way I get beat is when I beat myself.”

To make that harder to do, he picked up a few other pitches at LSU to complement his fastball and slider. To capitalize on his velocity, Skenes toyed around with a splinker — a hybrid of a splitter and a sinker — thrown by only one other pitcher, Twins closer Jhoan Duran. With his newfound feel for spin, he developed a curveball, too. While neither pitch fully formed in college, he kept working at them.

“What we’re seeing, more than anything, is a remarkable desire to be very honest with information, very honest with feedback and very fast to adjust,” Cherington said. “I hate making comps. This is not a great comp because it’s not the same type of player. But I’ve told people I believe Mookie Betts is the best practice player I’ve ever been around. Yes, he’s talented, but specifically because he’s so open to the truth and has such a comfortable relationship with, ‘Oh, I’m not doing that well enough? Great. Give it to me so I can do something about it.’

“It sounds so simple, but it’s very hard for people to do that. And we see some of that in Paul. Different players, different personalities, different people. But that relationship with the feedback he’s getting about what his pitches are doing, what his delivery is doing, this is the target of where they want it to be. Those adjustments happen quickly.”


FOR THE BETTER part of a decade, the Pirates have lived among the dregs of Major League Baseball. They are terminally parsimonious, running a bottom-five Opening Day payroll for the past seven seasons. Since Cherington took over as GM in November 2019, they’ve made organizational strides but never finished higher than fourth place in the National League Central division.

To win the inaugural draft lottery in 2022, then, was a gift for an organization that last made the postseason in 2015. On July 9, 2023, the Pirates chose Skenes over Crews and Florida outfielder Wyatt Langford with the first pick in the draft. After signing for a record $9.2 million bonus, Skenes threw 6⅔ innings over five Low-A appearances that summer. They were glorified bullpen sessions following the grind of the college season, more an opportunity for Skenes to familiarize himself with the organization and vice versa.

The real work started last winter. The Pirates recognized that Skenes could have pitched effectively in the major leagues the day he was drafted, but they wondered whether sending him there to start the 2024 season would be best for his long-term development. Before it could figure out how best to deploy Skenes, the Pirates’ front office needed to answer a question: What are we trying to accomplish?

“We took him 1-1. We really, really think highly of him,” Cherington said. “We’re placing a very strong bet on him and have believed since the day we drafted him that he’s going to be a really good major league starting pitcher. But pitching is hard to predict a week from now, let alone a year from now.”

What Pittsburgh landed on attempted to balance the future and the now. A drastic increase over his 122 innings from last year spooked the Pirates, even, as Cherington admits, “there’s an arbitrariness in that.” Starting Skenes in the major leagues while throttling him could cause undue strain on the team’s bullpen.

By sending Skenes to the minor leagues, the Pirates reasoned, they could see firsthand how he best operates and what he needs. He could introduce his splinker and curveball in an environment likelier to build confidence in the pitches. He could check a number of boxes progressively: efficiency in his early starts with limited pitch counts, game-planning as he was allowed to go through a lineup multiple times and stamina as he transitioned from five days’ rest to the standard four in the major leagues. All while keeping his minor league innings totals low so they don’t have to shut him down before the end of the season.

“We’d rather have the majority of the volume available to him be in the major leagues and not the minor leagues,” Cherington said. “Managing the volume progression early so it’s building more slowly than an established major league starter’s would, but in a way where we’re not using an unnecessary number of innings in the minor leagues.”

The plan made sense to Skenes. He’s 21 years old. As tantalizing as pitching in the major leagues is, he’s also patient enough to recognize the value of slow-playing his first full professional season. At the same time, because of the Pirates’ miserly ways and general ineffectiveness — they currently are in third place in the NL Central at 17-21 — the less-charitable read on the decision was that the team was manipulating Skenes’ service time. By keeping Skenes in the minor leagues until May 11, when he’ll officially be called up for his debut, he will reach free agency after the 2030 season instead of 2029.

“I really don’t believe it’s played any role in this case. I really mean this,” Cherington said. “We decided in spring training that … we wanted to build the volume more slowly than an established major league starter would. Once we made that decision, functionally, it has to start in the minor leagues.”


FROM THE MOMENT he started in Triple-A Indianapolis, it was evident Skenes did not belong there. In his first outing, he struck out five hitters in three perfect innings. He allowed two baserunners in his next start with six punchouts. He K’d eight hitters in each of his next two games, both with 3⅓ scoreless innings. He allowed his first run in his fifth start, then stretched out in his sixth with six shutout innings on 75 pitches. At this point, every box is checked.

“Seriously, when I say he’s pretty good, it’s different. I ain’t being dramatic,” said reliever Brent Honeywell, who was with the Padres and White Sox last season and played in Indianapolis with Skenes this season. “It’s like, oh, he throws hard, he throws hard, he throws hard. Yeah, that s—‘s cool and all, but the kid can flat-out pitch. Pitch. That dude paints. He throws it where it’s intended to go, and I think it’s the biggest thing that Paul Skenes does. He’s got a cool fastball. His heater’s really good. But that dude throws the ball where it’s supposed to go.”

Honeywell is right. It’s not just the fastball, which Skenes has thrown 46.9% of the time at an average of 100 mph on the dot. The splinker is a weapon, generating swings and misses 21% of the time as it sizzles up to 97 mph. Batters are hitting .158 against the slider. Five of the 11 curveballs Skenes has thrown have been on the first pitch, a surprise for anyone who dares sit fastball.

“The great ones have this ability to stretch their mind to these uncomfortable levels,” Johnson said. “That’s why they don’t give away at-bats. That’s how they don’t take pitches off. Paul already has that side of him. The Pirates knew what they were getting with the talent and body and raw numbers. But he’s so advanced on that kind of stuff.”

Knowing that their time with him was nearing its end, Skenes’ teammates in Indianapolis tried to enjoy the remaining moments. They’ll miss his outlandish performances, sure, but also his baseball knowledge and sense of humor. Grant Koch, who caught the majority of Skenes’ starts, had a running joke on days he didn’t play. If a reliever needed to warm up, Koch would toss Skenes his catcher’s mitt and say, within earshot of the coaching staff: “Hey, Paul, go grab him for me real quick. I’ve got to go to the bathroom.” The response, Koch said, from the coaches: “No, no, no, no.”

“When you’re around people that are great and special at what they do, you learn a lot being around them,” Koch said. “Pitching and game-planning-wise. Routine stuff. He takes his work very seriously. Hopefully I’ve made him comfortable and helped him in a way. But I’m appreciative of the time. It’s been a cool experience.”

Not just for a player like Koch who has yet to make the big leagues but one like Honeywell who’s angling to return. Six years ago, Honeywell was regarded as one of the best prospects in baseball, universally ranked among the game’s 15 best. Though arm injuries waylaid Honeywell’s ascent, he emerged with the sort of perspective that few understand.

Everyone, Honeywell said, will want to get a hit off Skenes’ fastball — “just to tell their friends they did it.” And in the major leagues, where 29 pitchers this season have thrown 100 mph-plus fastballs, velocity doesn’t play quite the same. It’s necessary, he said, for Skenes to remember that as good as the fastball is, he’s far more than one impressive pitch.

“He knows where he is going,” Honeywell said. “He knows where he is headed. He knows what his job’s supposed to be. He goes about his business the right way. The kid just wants to pitch. And I think the kid was made to pitch.”


ONE NEED ONLY consider the careers of previous pitching phenoms Mark Prior and Stephen Strasburg to see how wrong things can go for even seemingly the safest of pitching prospects.

In 2002, Prior blew through the minor leagues in 51 innings and threw another 116⅔ that season. He jumped to 211⅓ innings the next year and at 22 years old looked like baseball’s next great ace. Arm injuries derailed his career. He threw his last big league pitch at 25.

In 2010, Strasburg was even better than Prior in 55⅓ minor league innings and threw another 68 before he tore his ulnar collateral ligament and needed Tommy John surgery. He returned in late 2011 for five starts and cruised through 159⅓ innings in 2012 before the Nationals shut him down three weeks before the postseason. On-and-off injuries limited him for the remainder of his career, and he threw his last meaningful pitch at 31.

Now it’s Skenes’ turn. And it comes at a trying time for pitchers, when for all of the gains the sport has seen in maximizing pitching performance and velocity, keeping elite arms healthy remains a high-stakes crapshoot.

“The pitching ecosystem knows so much about how to optimize: the body, the delivery, the way the arm works, how fast guys move, creating force,” Cherington said. “What hasn’t changed is the way the elbow and shoulder are built when you’re born. We have way more data. We should be way more precise about what’s going on.”

It will be years before the Pirates know if the plan worked. And even if it does — if Skenes stays healthy and turns into the next great ace — the line from plan to success is neither clear nor causative.

As scary as the prospect of Skenes improving on the fly might be for the rest of the NL Central, it’s what the Pirates need. Already this year they’ve added a hypertalented, hard-throwing, right-handed rookie to their rotation in Jared Jones. Pairing him with Skenes and right-hander Mitch Keller gives Pittsburgh the sort of starting staff that could be the envy of baseball sooner rather than later and perhaps convince owner Bob Nutting to push the Pirates’ payroll past $100 million for the first time.

Cherington avoids getting too far ahead of himself. He tries not to stress about the list of high-velocity pitchers and arm injuries. Shohei Ohtani isn’t pitching this season because of reconstructive elbow surgery. Nor are Spencer Strider, Shane McClanahan, Sandy Alcantara and Eury Perez. Gerrit Cole and Jesus Luzardo are out with elbow injuries, Grayson Rodriguez and Bobby Miller on the shelf with shoulder issues. That’s nine of the 10 hardest-throwing starters in 2023 — a spot Skenes and Jones are certain to fill in their absence.

“We don’t know exactly the right way to manage it,” Cherington said. “We don’t. We want to win games, and they give us a chance to make that happen. In most cases, we’d really like to have models that really inform our decisions. And then humans can stress those models and push them left and right. In this case, we don’t have a model telling us.”

Ahead they forge nevertheless, unclear if their plan was right, praying things don’t go wrong. Such is life in modern baseball, where you never know. You simply hope.

Continue Reading

Sports

‘Reason he’s here’: Crochet delivers for Red Sox

Published

on

By

'Reason he's here': Crochet delivers for Red Sox

BALTIMORE — Garrett Crochet gave the Boston Red Sox an immediate return on their investment.

In his first start since agreeing to a $170 million, six-year contract, the left-hander pitched a career-best eight innings as the Red Sox shut out the Baltimore Orioles 3-0 on Wednesday night. Crochet also threw 102 pitches, one shy of his career high.

“My first start in college I went eight, and I haven’t sniffed it since,” Crochet said.

Crochet (1-0) gave up four hits and a walk while striking out eight in his first victory since the offseason trade that sent him from the Chicago White Sox to Boston.

“That’s the reason he’s here,” manager Alex Cora said after the game. “That’s the reason we committed to him.”

Crochet went 6-12 with a 3.58 ERA last season, a bright spot on a Chicago team that lost 121 games. He threw 146 innings, which was double his previous career total since his debut in 2020.

Then Crochet was dealt to the Red Sox, and they made their long-term commitment to the 25-year-old earlier this week.

“Going back to when the trade went through, we knew Boston was a place where we would love to be long term,” Crochet said. “Credit to the front office for staying diligent, and my agency as well.”

Now the question is less about where he’ll pitch and more about how well. He’s off to a nice start in that regard.

“I can’t think of the last time I played baseball for pride. In college, you’re playing to get drafted, and once you’re in the big leagues, you’re playing to stay in the big leagues,” Crochet said. “So to have this security and feel like I’m playing to truly just win ballgames, it takes a lot of the riff-raff out of it.”

The news all around was good for Boston on Wednesday.

It reached a $60 million, eight-year deal with young infielder Kristian Campbell, and he went out and doubled twice against the Orioles.

And Rafael Devers ended a 21-at-bat hitless streak to start the season with an RBI double in the fifth inning. He finished with two hits and no strikeouts.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

Continue Reading

Sports

Ohtani’s walk-off pushes Dodgers to historic 8-0

Published

on

By

Ohtani's walk-off pushes Dodgers to historic 8-0

LOS ANGELES — Aside from his ability to pitch and hit and stretch the boundaries of imagination, Shohei Ohtani has displayed another singular trait in his time in the major leagues: an ability to meet the moment. Or, perhaps, for the moment to meet him.

And so on Wednesday night, with his Los Angeles Dodgers looking to stay unbeaten, the score tied in the bottom of the ninth, and more than 50,000 fans standing and clenching the Ohtani bobbleheads they lined up hours in advance for, Ohtani approached the batter’s box — and his teammates expected greatness.

“He’s going to end this right here,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said he thought to himself.

“We knew,” starting pitcher Blake Snell said. “It’s just what he does.”

Validation came instantly. Ohtani stayed back on a first-pitch changeup from Raisel Iglesias near the outside corner and shot it toward straightaway center field, 399 feet away, for a walk-off home run, sending the Dodgers to a 6-5, come-from-behind victory over the reeling Atlanta Braves.

“I don’t think anybody didn’t expect him to hit a walk-off home run there,” Dodgers utility man Tommy Edman said. “It’s just a question of where he’d hit it.”

The Dodgers are now 8-0, topping the 1933 New York Yankees of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth for the longest winning streak to begin a season for a reigning champion. The Braves, meanwhile, are 0-7, the type of record no team has ever recovered from to make the playoffs. And Ohtani, with three home runs and a 1.126 OPS this season, just keeps meeting moments.

“He’s pretty good, huh?” Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernandez said. “It’s Shohei. He’s going to do that. He’s going to do things better than that.”

On Aug. 23 last year, Ohtani reached the 40/40 club with a walk-off grand slam. Five days later, the Dodgers staged a second giveaway of his bobblehead — one that saw his now-famous dog, Decoy, handle the ceremonial first pitch — and Ohtani led off with a home run. On Sept. 19, Ohtani clinched his first postseason berth and ascended into the unprecedented 50/50 club with one of the greatest single-game performances in baseball history — six hits, three homers, two steals and 10 RBIs. Barely two weeks later, he homered in his first playoff game.

When Ohtani came up on Wednesday, he had what he described as a simple approach.

“I was looking for a really good pitch to hit,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “If I didn’t get a good pitch to hit, I was willing to walk.”

Of course, though, he got a good pitch.

And, of course, he sent it out.

“You just feel that he’s going to do something special,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “And I just like the way he’s not pressing. He’s in the strike zone, and when he does that, there’s just no one better.”

The Dodgers began their much-anticipated season with a couple of breezy wins over the Chicago Cubs from Japan, even though Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman did not play in them. They returned home, brought iconic rapper Ice Cube out to present the World Series trophy on one afternoon, received their rings on another and swept a three-game series against the Detroit Tigers. Then came the Braves, and the Dodgers swept them, too — even though Freeman, nursing an ankle injury caused from slipping in the shower, didn’t participate.

The Dodgers already have two walk-offs and six comeback wins this season.

Wednesday’s effort left Roberts “a little dumbfounded.”

A nightmarish start defensively, highlighted by two errant throws from Muncy, spoiled Snell’s start and put them behind 5-0 after the first inning and a half. But the Dodgers kept inching closer. They trailed by just two in the eighth and put runners on second and third with two out. Muncy came to bat with his batting average at just .083. He had used the ballyhooed “Torpedo” bat for his first three plate appearances, didn’t like how it altered his swing plane, grabbed his usual bat for a showdown against Iglesias and laced a game-tying double into the right-center-field gap.

An inning later, Ohtani ended it.

“Overall, not just tonight, there is a really good vibe within the team,” Ohtani said after recording his fourth career walk-off hit. “I just think that’s allowing us to come back in these games to win.”

The Dodgers’ 8-0 start has allowed them to stay just ahead of the 7-0 San Diego Padres and the 5-1 San Francisco Giants in the National League West. Tack on the Arizona Diamondbacks (4-2) and the Colorado Rockies (1-4), and this marks the first time in the divisional era that an entire division has combined for at least 25 wins and no more than seven losses, according to ESPN Research. The Dodgers’ and Padres’ starts mark just the fifth season in major league history with multiple teams starting 7-0 or better, and the first time since 2003.

The Dodgers famously overcame a 2-1 series deficit to vanquish the Padres in the NL Division Series last year, then rode that fight to their first full-season championship since 1988.

That fight hasn’t let up.

“It feels like this clubhouse is carrying a little bit of the attitude we had last year that we’re never out of a game and we’re resilient, and we’ve been carrying it into this season,” Muncy said. “It’s been fun to watch. The guys don’t give up. Bad things have happened, and no one’s really been down or out on themselves. Everyone’s just, ‘All right, here we go, next inning, let’s get after it.’ The whole team, top to bottom, has been doing that. It’s been making it really, really fun to play.”

Continue Reading

Sports

Death of Gardner’s son pinned to carbon monoxide

Published

on

By

Death of Gardner's son pinned to carbon monoxide

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Carbon monoxide poisoning was the cause of death of the teenage son of former New York Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner, authorities in Costa Rica said Wednesday night.

Randall Zúñiga, director of the Judicial Investigation Agency, said 14-year-old Miller Gardner was tested for carboxyhemoglobin, a compound generated when carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin in the blood.

When carboxyhemoglobin saturation exceeds 50%, it is considered lethal. In Gardner’s case, the test showed a saturation of 64%.

“It’s important to note that adjacent to this room is a dedicated machine room, where it’s believed there may be some type of contamination toward these rooms,” Zúñiga said.

The head of the Costa Rican judicial police added that, during the autopsy, a “layer” was detected on the boy’s organs, which forms when there is a high presence of the poisonous gas.

Gardner died March 21 while staying with his family at a hotel on the Manuel Antonio beach in Costa Rica’s Central Pacific.

Asphyxiation was initially thought to have caused his death. After an autopsy was performed by the Forensic Pathology Section, that theory was ruled out.

Another line of investigation centered around whether the family had suffered food poisoning. Family members had reported feeling ill after dining at a nearby restaurant on the night of March 20 and received treatment from the hotel doctor.

Brett Gardner, 41, was drafted by the Yankees in 2005 and spent his entire major league career with the organization. The speedy outfielder batted .256 with 139 homers, 578 RBIs, 274 steals and 73 triples in 14 seasons from 2008 to 2021.

Continue Reading

Trending