Paul Skenes Named All-Star Starter for National League
After only 11 starts this season, Pirates rookie phenom Paul Skenes has been named the starting pitcher for the National League All-Star team. Skenes has been absolutely unreal this season, with seven wins, a 1.90 ERA, 2.58 FIP, and 89 strikeouts in 66.1 innings pitched. Similarly, the Pirates have won all 11 of the games started by Skenes this season. With seven no-hit innings and 11 strikeouts on Thursday against the Brewers, Skenes kept up his dominant season so far. In this game, he joined Nolan Ryan as the only pitcher to pitch at least six hitless innings and rack up at least 11 strikeouts in multiple seasons. He is also the first rookie to pitch multiple games with at least six hitless innings thrown.
With Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo’s decision to start Skenes at next week’s All-Star Game, Skenes is now the fifth rookie pitcher to do so. The former first-round pick joins Dave Stenhouse, Mark Fidrych, Fernando Valenzuela, and Hideo Nomo to be handed this honor. Skenes is one of the most electric players in all of sports, so it’s only fitting that he is going to join such a small list of rookies to ever start the game. He has had an absolutely unreal past year or so, winning the 2023 College World Series, getting drafted first overall, getting called up less than a year later, and now this achievement.
A pitcher that Skenes routinely gets compared to is the 2019 World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg. This is due to both having electric fastballs, being called up early, and having crazy starts to their young careers. Even though Strasburg was dominant his rookie year, with a 5-2 record and a 2.91 ERA in 12 starts, Skenes is on a whole different level. A pitcher that had similar success to these two is the previously mentioned Fidrych, who had 19 wins, a 2.34 ERA and an astonishing 24 complete games in 29 starts his rookie year. Fidrych, commonly known as “The Bird,” sadly dealt with horrible injuries, only making 27 more starts the rest of his career. With Strasburg also dealing with a ton of injuries, as a baseball fan, you have to hope it’s going to be a different story with Skenes. He is obviously ultra-talented, being tasked with starting this year’s All-Star Game. If he can keep up his dominance and stay away from injuries, he can be one of the best pitchers we’ve ever seen.
