‘It’s 100 all day long’: How Paul Skenes is turning every start into a must-watch event
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Jesse Rogers, ESPN Staff Writer
The first time Chicago Cubs outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong was on the same field as Pittsburgh Pirates rookie pitcher Paul Skenes, their roles were reversed.
The two were playing together on the United States 12U national team, in Mazatlan, Mexico, in 2014, well before Skenes would become baseball’s biggest pitching phenom. Crow-Armstrong pitched in the tournament, but Skenes never took the mound.
“He was a scrawny catcher,” Crow-Armstrong recalled with a smirk. “I took home the lowest ERA in the tournament, but he’s the No.1 pick.
“I guess things changed.”
Over the first 10 innings of Skenes’ major league career, Crow-Armstrong and the Cubs got a firsthand view at just how much.
The No.1 overall pick from last summer’s loaded MLB draft has wowed the baseball world with his mound presence and electric stuff, throwing 29 pitches at 100 mph or faster — already the most by any starter this season. Just two starts into his big league career, Skenes’ outings have become must-watch events.
“Watching him is like looking at your odometer on the autobahn,” one rival scout said. “It’s 100 all day long.”
In his first major league start on May 11, Skenes said he didn’t really feel like himself. Perhaps it was due to all the hype leading up to the day or just the nerves that come with a major league debut, but the tall right-hander gave up three runs on six hits and two walks in four innings at home against the Cubs. Six days later, in his first road start, Skenes showed what all the hype was about.
“It’s not an easy game to play but it’s a lot easier when you have fastball command and command over your pitches,” Skenes told ESPN after his second game. “It wasn’t necessarily working in my debut, but it was working this time.”
Skenes struck out the first seven batters he faced. He finished the day with 11 strikeouts over six hitless innings, setting a franchise mark for the most K’s by a Pirates pitcher at Wrigley Field, one of the game’s most iconic venues.
“It’s frickin’ Wrigley Field,” Skenes said. “It was sweet.”
Any thought that the Cubs would have an advantage seeing the same pitcher within a week were erased with every eye-popping pitch. Skenes averaged an incredible 99.3 mph on his fastball, 94.8 on his splitter, 86.8 on his change, 84 on his slider and 80 on his curve.
Mike Tauchman was among the many Cubs hitters who couldn’t catch up to Skenes’ stuff. Chicago’s DH struck out three times, including a swing-and-miss on a 100-mph fastball that marked the end of Skenes’ day in the bottom of the sixth inning.
“The fastball command was good,” Tauchman said. “And then he was able to tunnel that splitter/sinker — or whatever he calls it — off of it. And throw those all competitively. When you’re dealing with someone with that velocity and command, and they make you make split-second decisions — he did a good job.”
That combination pitch is called a splinker (though officially tracked as a splitter by MLB Statcast), and the new wrinkle in Skenes’ repertoire is threatening to make the already-daunting task of facing the sport’s best young pitcher downright unfair.
“It tunnels well off his fastball. It has enough of a similar look off his hand,” Tauchman said. “It has more run and drop than his fastball does.”
Skenes mostly stuck to his fastball/splinker combo, mixing in enough of his other pitches to keep the Cubs guessing and showing what separates him in an era full of hard-throwing, young pitchers.
“That’s what attracted us to him,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “His ability with the pitch mix. You can look up and see 101 mph and get excited about it. The fact that he can spin the ball behind in the count, you don’t see guys come out of college a year ago that have the ability to do that.”
After managing two weakly hit groundouts against his former teammate, Crow-Armstrong offered his takeaways for the next teams to face Skenes.
“Being able to limit the top for him or limit the bottom is going to be very important because his stuff plays really well at both levels,” Crow-Armstrong said. “Anything that runs 18 inches at 100 mph is pretty tough.”
Skenes said his phone blew up after the dominant performance, but admitted “that’s been the norm for a while now” since he entered the spotlight while leading LSU to the College World Series title. One of the first people Skenes heard from after the outing at Wrigley was Ryan Theriot, a former LSU and Cubs infielder. The pitcher’s performance reminded Theriot of a former Chicago strikeout artist.
“I know the [Stephen] Strasburg comps, but I feel like it’s more like Kerry Wood in his prime,” Theriot said in a phone interview. “Just the demeanor. I’m not talking about the stuff. I’m talking about the attitude and the demeanor.”
That attitude is why the Pirates are confident he can handle the pressure of being a budding face of the franchise at such a young age. It helps that before transferring at LSU, Skenes attended the Air Force Academy and spent two years as an aspiring cadet.
“You definitely have to be able to handle stuff if you go to the Air Force,” Skenes said. “That taught me how to not care too much about struggling and about staying steady.”
From a somewhat rocky first start to a dazzling follow-up performance that has the whole baseball world watching, that mindset is already paying off for MLB’s newest ace.
While fans in Edmonton and Dallas are always singing about how they have friends in low places, only one of them has the high ground in the Western Conference finals. And that’s the Oilers after their 6-1 win Sunday in Game 3 to take a 2-1 series lead.
With the series tied heading into Sunday, the objective for Game 3 was to gain a firm grasp of the conference finals, and the Oilers did just that by having five players with multipoint performances. As for the Stars, losing Game 3 left them trailing a series for the second time this postseason, with the only other such occurrence coming after Game 1 against the Colorado Avalanche in the first round.
Now that the Oilers are in control of the series, what does it mean for them going forward? What must the Stars do differently ahead of Game 4 for them to return home tied rather than a game away from elimination? Ryan S. Clark and Greg Wyshynski examine those questions while delving into what lies ahead for two teams that not only faced each other in the conference finals last season but between them have been involved in every conference final since 2020.
Edmonton Oilers
Grade: A
Much could change between now and whenever the playoffs end. But for now, the argument could be made that this was the most important playoff game the Oilers have had this postseason.
The Oilers have had numerous strong performances, such as Game 3 against the Los Angeles Kings in the first round or their final two games against the Vegas Golden Knights in the conference semifinals. But what made the Oilers’ performance in Game 3 against Dallas arguably their most important was that they found a balance between being difficult in the defensive zone while not relying on a shutout to accomplish that objective.
The Stars finished with 37 shots, 13 high-danger chances in 5-on-5 play and scored only once. Connor McDavid has repeatedly stressed that the Oilers can play defense, and that has been made clear over their past five games. But Sunday proved they didn’t need Stuart Skinner or their defensive structure to blank an opponent to win. — Ryan S. Clark
Dallas Stars
Grade: C+
The final score doesn’t reflect the majority of this game, which Dallas coach Pete DeBoer can mine for positives among the many (many) negatives and some mitigating circumstances. Having Roope Hintz warm up but not be able to go because of the foot injury he suffered from a Darnell Nurse slash in Game 2? That’s deflating. Having the on-ice officials miss a delay of game call on Brett Kulak in the first period only to have Evan Bouchard open the scoring 10 seconds later? Also deflating.
So it’s to the Stars’ credit that they got to their game at 5-on-5 in Game 3 better than they have in any game of the series, at least before Edmonton ran up the score in the third. The results weren’t there and a loss is a loss — and a loss by this margin is difficult to stomach — but their second period and the performances from some of their slumbering depth players give the Stars at least a glimmer.
However, there’s no question Edmonton has this thing in well in-hand and the Stars have to find a way to solve Skinner, which is not something I thought I’d be writing at this stage of the postseason. — Greg Wyshynski
Three Stars of Game 3
Two goals and an assist for his seventh career multigoal playoff game. Hyman’s second goal was the Oilers’ fourth off the rush, the most in one game by any team this postseason. Hyman also was plus-5 Sunday.
Bouchard scored his sixth goal of the postseason and these two were on the ice for the first two Edmonton goals. At 5-on-5 this postseason, the Oilers are outscoring their opponents 7-1, and 5-0 in this series, when Bouchard and Kulak are on the ice.
0:48
Connor McDavid restores Oilers’ 2-goal lead
Connor McDavid finds the back of the net to restore the Oilers’ two-goal lead vs. the Stars.
3. Connor McDavid
C, Oilers
For all the talk about the lack of goals from the best hockey player in the world (which was odd because he had 20 points in 13 games and was a plus-7 entering Game 3 despite having only three goals), McDavid punched out a pair of tucks for his sixth career multigoal playoff game. Also, seeing McDavid with the puck barreling toward the net on a 3-on-1 is nightmare fuel for opponents. — Arda Öcal
Players to watch in Game 4
Zach Hyman
LW, Oilers
To go from 16 goals last postseason to just three goals entering Game 3 of the conference finals is one way to assess Hyman. Another is to realize that he’s been the most physical player on a team that is among the tallest and heaviest in the NHL.
Hyman came into Game 3 leading the NHL with 99 hits. He remained physical Sunday by leading the way with six hits in a game that saw the Oilers continue their punishing style with 47. But to then see Hyman score two goals and finish with three points in addition to that physicality? It once again adds to the narrative that the Oilers might not only have more dimensions than last year’s team, they could be better than the team that finished Stanley Cup runner-up in 2024. — Clark
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Zach Hyman’s 2nd goal puts Oilers up 4
Zach Hyman taps home his second goal of the game to put the Oilers up 5-1 vs. the Stars.
This is the first two-game losing streak for the Dallas goaltender in the playoffs. A lot of what happened in Game 3 wasn’t necessarily on him — a Connor McDavid beauty and a Zach Hyman breakaway were among the Edmonton tallies — but outside of the third period of Game 1, he’s not been a difference-maker in this series. Oettinger came into the game leading the playoffs with 5.58 goals saved above expected, according to Stathletes. The Stars have been able to depend on him as a slump-breaker. But this is his third game with a save percentage south of .900 in the series. As the Stars try to build on some positives from this game, they need Otter to provide the foundation for it — and in the process, silence those “U.S. backup!” chants from the Oilers fans. — Wyshynski
Big questions for Game 4
Are the Oilers about to do to the Stars what they did to the Golden Knights?
Simply put, the Oilers are where hope goes to die. Teams in a championship window that have yet to win a title are always being judged on their evolution. What the Oilers did to the Stars a year ago in the conference finals by winning the last three games showed that they could close out a series after trailing. This postseason Edmonton has shown a calculated and methodical coldness when it comes to putting away opponents.
The Golden Knights won Game 3 on a last-second goal to create the belief they may have found an opening. They didn’t score again for the rest of the playoffs after being in the top five of goals per game throughout the regular season. Breaking out for six goals to open the series seemed to be a sign the Stars may have found an opening. Since then? They’ve scored only once in the last six periods while facing questions about what’s happened to another team that went from being in the top five in goals per game in the regular season. — Clark
Can Dallas make Edmonton uncomfortable at all?
Our colleague Mark Messier made this point between periods of Game 3: The Stars have yet to do anything to get McDavid or Leon Draisaitl off their games. That extends to the rest of the Oilers. Outside of an anomalous run of three power-play goals in the third period of Game 1, there have been precious few instances of the Stars carrying play for long stretches or putting a scare into Edmonton at 5-on-5.
They had that for a bit in Game 3 with a dominant second period: plus-14 in shot attempts, plus-11 in scoring chances and a 10-1 advantage in high-danger shot attempts. But they were digging out of a 2-0 hole, only managed to get one goal of their own on the board and then McDavid stuck a dagger in them with 19 seconds left in the second.
The Stars need a lead. They need zone time. They need to get their rush game going: Skinner had a .897 save percentage on shots off the rush entering the game. Edmonton is playing with a champion’s confidence. Dallas has to find a way to inject a little doubt into its opponent or this series is going to end quickly. — Wyshynski
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