Paul Skenes in Year 2: Rethinking what's possible

Some have been here for hours when a Topps trading card official takes a microphone and asks the eager adults with memorabilia in hand near the stage to move back so kids can occupy the space near where the major-league players will be seated for the event.

All eyes are on the shop's back door; an anxious impatience builds as they wait for the headline act to arrive.

About 30 minutes after the scheduled 6 p.m. start, the door opens, and the emcee begins making introductions. First out is Orioles prospect Coby Mayo. Polite clapping ensues.

Next up is Orioles teammate Jackson Holliday, then Baltimore's All-Star catcher Adley Rutschman. The applause increases.

Sarasota's the spring training home of the Orioles, but much of the crowd is waiting for the last player, whose team is camped over in Bradenton.

"Paul Skeeeenessss," shouts the emcee.

The crowd erupts as the Pittsburgh Pirates' reigning NL Rookie of the Year makes his way to the stage. He's wearing a white sports jacket and jeans. The kids in front are slack-jawed at the 6-foot-6 gentleman who's appeared. The dozens of adults under the canopy raise their smartphones to capture the moment, flashes going off in the dim early evening light.

Each player offers a few words and takes a selfie with the crowd. Rutschman yells "Let's go!" into his phone camera for a selfie with a backdrop of saucer-eyed kids. Skenes gives a shallow smile when it's his turn. He's never seemed all that comfortable in the spotlight. Perhaps he's not interested in the attention, whether it's under this canopy or as a guest on ESPN's College GameDay. Landing that ESPN invitation is a testament to the rare appeal of an MLB player beyond baseball.

His reaction to winning Rookie of the Year was so lacking in enthusiasm, it became a meme. Skenes later told late-night host Seth Meyers it was "composure" rather than "indifference."

When it comes to his career, Skenes is almost singularly focused on fulfilling the promise that comes with being the No. 1 draft pick in 2023. He wants to stuff the back of his trading cards with innings and strikeouts like aces in the heyday of the starting pitcher.

He says he wants to pitch 240 innings this season, which hasn't been done since 2014. It seems unlikely the Pirates will allow him to reach that number yet, but he spent the offseason building capacity to attempt it. He also expanded his pitch repertoire. Skenes has big plans for Year 2. Unlike his rookie season when the Pirates held him in Triple-A to start the season to control his innings, he wants no limitations in 2025.

In a brief media availability inside the cramped, overheated card shop, Skenes' handlers wrap things up quickly and admonish reporters for asking questions that weren't about collectibles. The handful of reporters are only here because Skenes is almost always unavailable during normal clubhouse hours. Time is finite and it becomes precious when you want to force the game to rethink what's possible.

The scarlet X

The default method for handling young pitchers is fear-based.

It goes something like this: Every throw increases injury risk, so reducing workload limits risk, especially for hard throwers like Skenes.

There's one problem, though: This approach isn't working. Pitchers still get injured. Baseball analyst Dave McDonald noticed most of the highest-velocity starting pitchers from 2023 entered the 2024 season on the injured list or ended up there. He marked injured pitchers with a red X when he shared this on social media.

His final update from 2024, ranked by top 2023 velocity:

❌Bobby Miller, Hunter Greene, Sandy Alcántara, Eury Pérez, Grayson Rodriguez, Spencer Strider, Shane McClanahan, Jésus Luzardo, Gerrit Cole, Graham Ashcraft, Shohei Ohtani, and Tyler Glasnow.

The ones who stayed healthy? Cole Ragans, Luis Severino, and Luis Castillo.

Who topped the starters' velocity list last season? Skenes.

His average fastball reached 98.8 mph in 2024. No starter's thrown as hard as Skenes over as many innings (133) in the pitch-tracking era.

Miller and Jacob deGrom each hit a 99-mph average as starters in recent seasons in fewer innings but suffered injuries after doing so.

MLB published a 62-page injury report in December that said throwing velocity was the primary contributor to injury. MLB's conclusion? Find a way to slow velocity.

But Skenes isn't interested in limits. At the Topps event, he said he met Hall of Fame workhorse Randy Johnson last year. Skenes strives to emulate Johnson's volume and ability.

"He said, 'Hey, don't let anyone put limits on you in terms of innings and stuff like that,' because we were kind of in the middle of that (last season)," Skenes says. "He said: Work hard and you're going to be in a position to take on that volume."

A day later back in Bradenton, I ask Skenes if he read MLB's injury report. He scoffs.

"I don't think that report is worth reading," Skenes says. "I think there are people in this game that are ahead of the curve and behind the curve.

"We are throwing everything harder than we ever have before, but we aren't training much differently. It's kinda one of these things where … 'You're spinning breaking balls at 92 mph with 3,000 RPMs, that's not what the human arm is made to do.' But when we do that, we must figure out new ways to train, so that your body can withstand that. Because there are guys (who) have withstood that."

Skenes is intent on becoming one of those guys. Those guys are generally Hall of Famers.

"I want (MLB) to write a report about - they never will because these guys are never going to let them in the door - guys like (Justin) Verlander, Cole, (Clayton) Kershaw. They've done what they've done at a very high level for a very long time. Aroldis Chapman. I want to see a report on what those guys do."

Capacity

If Skenes trusts you, he'll listen. He'll want to learn from you.

When Skenes transferred from Air Force to LSU for his junior season - he'd become too tall to chase his original dream of flying fighter jets - he had to undergo significant change.

Although he won the John Olerud Award as the best two-way player in college baseball at Air Force, it was clear his future was as a pitcher. An MLB team was going to draft him as one.

To gain Skenes' trust, LSU's pitching coach and performance coach in 2023, Wes Johnson and Derek Groomer, had a simple plan: Show him evidence. Put him through their lab and show him the data.

Johnson, 53, is one of the most innovative pitching minds in the industry. He codeveloped the first practice mound outfitted with force plates to measure how pitchers interact with the ground. Minnesota Twins GM Derek Falvey was so impressed with Johnson's work as pitching coach at Arkansas, he hired him to be the Twins' pitching coach in 2019. Such a leap from college to the majors hadn't happened in decades.

Groomer, 28, is similarly curious and driven. He's worked with Johnson since graduating with a kinesiology degree from Arkansas. He added a master's degree at Florida and spent part of 2019 helping the New York Mets build a sports science department.

Johnson and Groomer remain embedded in Skenes' offseason pitching development and in-season management. Johnson left LSU after one season to become head coach at Georgia, and Groomer leads Georgia's baseball team's performance department. But they also work with select pro arms.

Is their approach similar to, say, Driveline Baseball? "If a neuroscientist ran Driveline, maybe," Groomer says. Their goal is to be "five years ahead of the next-best person."

"A lot of our stuff is our own, it's kind of a secret," he says. "No one else knows it. We have every data marker you could ever imagine, and more you couldn't think of."

Says Skenes: "Working hard doesn't solve the whole puzzle. You have to have good people around you. I have good people around me, people I trust."

When they first placed Skenes in their LSU lab, they immediately realized everything about him was unusual.

"Everything from the assessment from his hands to his feet to the bone lengths - he's very oddly made up," Groomer says. "But he's perfectly made up to be a perfect pitcher."

He wasn't yet perfect, though.

"He was 95 (mph)," Groomer says of Skenes' first throws at LSU. "But he should be 100 miles an hour, based upon our testing models. We had (his projected max velocity) at, like, 104. We're like, 'How is he not throwing 100?'"

They showed him the charts, the speeds at which various parts of his body moved, his joint mobility, and explained he wasn't getting enough out of his natural gifts.

"These are numbers that are almost unachievable by many, many people," Groomer says. "'Your hip test is unreal, your arm testing - you never get fatigued.' Showing him, 'This is what your anatomy is, and this is how you can pitch if we tweak this.'"

Many coaches would have started by having Skenes drop his hitting routine immediately.

"You can't just cut cold turkey from hitting. That would throw his whole body off," Groomer says. "That's where we run into a lot of problems with dual guys. If you just cut (hitting) off, the whole body has been wired to do both. Your central nervous system has no idea you are going to cut cold turkey, so it's not going to give you your full energy reserve. It still thinks, 'I might have to go hit later.'"

Groomer worked with Skenes on drills that replicated some of the hitting movement and stress while gradually reducing them over time so his system would adapt to the change.

As a full-time pitcher, his arm endurance wowed them.

"His energy system capacity is unreal," Groomer says. "He can go for hours. We don't do it anymore, the big leagues, they don't let them go far, but at LSU we had him at 200 plus (pitches) before he had a 2-mph drop in fastball velocity.

"When he threw a complete game versus Tulane (in the 2023 NCAA regionals), it was, like, pitch 123 and he hit 102 mph. His first pitch was 102 (mph) and last pitch - like, pitch 123 - was also 102."

At LSU, the plan had a heavy strength-building element geared to building more mass and velocity. This offseason, the plan was adjusted for Skenes to focus on training his ability to log innings. They built the race car, Groomer says, and now it's more about fine-tuning it for extended performance.

"That's a huge part of the year people overlook in terms of building up volume, being able to withstand volume," Skenes says.

Skenes and Groomer speak every day. They monitor scores of data points, making adjustments based on the readings and how Skenes is feeling.

"People ask me: 'How do you see Paul?' To me, he's a wall and there are 2,000 dials on it," Groomer says. "You're constantly turning dials.

"We've got his daily assessment he does (and) we can just make all the tweaks so he's 100% Paul every game. So he's not funky-hamstring Paul, or tight-back Paul."

They want Skenes at 100% physically so he's not pitching with maximum effort.

Verlander, one of the players Skenes strives to emulate, said last year he thinks part of MLB's injury surge is tied to the increase in max-effort throwing. Verlander said he wouldn't always throw all out earlier in his career, that he'd keep 98 mph in the tank for later in the game. He believed that kept him healthy.

The gap between minimum and maximum fastball velocities is shrinking, suggesting more max-effort pitches, as I studied last year.

Perhaps what could help Skenes remain healthy is his range was wider than the MLB average last year, at 5.8 mph. His top fastball velocity was 101.9 mph, while his slowest was 95.6 mph, a difference of 6.5 mph.

"You don't want to be at max effort ever. Your max effort should be 98%," Groomer says. "Max output does lead to injuries. He barely throws 100%. A race car doesn't go out and go pedal down the entire time. They use the brake. They coast around the corner and then they hit the gas."

While Groomer helped build Skenes' throwing capacity, Johnson worked on his arsenal of pitches and mechanical efficiency.

Watch Skenes in the bullpen pregame and you'll see him practicing unusual constraint drills like twisting his body with a water jug backpack to help him maintain balance and reinforce efficient movement patterns.

"We're just trying to sync up his delivery without thinking about the biomechanics too much," Johnson told former major leaguer Trevor May last year. "When he gets into the external rotation of his back hip, when it's on time, he's as good as I've ever seen."

Efficiency

Skenes eats a lot. Some days 5,000 calories, because he's burning that same amount a day. Yet he's the same weight when I spoke to him in Florida that he was when he appeared in the 2023 College World Series: 262 pounds.

That steady state speaks to a couple of things. One is adherence to a plan.

Pirates director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk says there are two pitchers he's worked with who had the same discipline in their performance training: Kershaw and Cole.

"There's most likely strong correlation with career longevity, arm health, and what they've been able to put into their careers, their attention to detail, the always asking a question," Tomczyk says. "From sleep to nutrition, you name it, this man is tracking it."

It's adherence to a plan but also what Skenes is placing in his body.

"I get fat when he stays with me too much," Groomer says of their offseason training in Athens, Georgia. "It's six eggs, two oatmeals, and orange juice for breakfast. It would be two times what a normal breakfast should be for a human being. That dude eats a lot. Every four hours he's turning around and eating a meal."

Skenes' go-to pregame meal is chicken alfredo. During a start, he can go through half a jar of honey. Why honey? It provides carbohydrates for quick energy, maintains blood sugar levels, and even helps with hydration.

Following a season, Pirates coaches discuss offseason plans with their players. When pitching coach Oscar Marin connected with Skenes, the focus was on adding to his pitch assortment.

Even though Skenes overwhelmed batters last season with his high velocity, darting breaking ball, and diving splinker, he wanted more.

"It was just noticing things throughout the season, like, 'Dang, it would be nice if I had this,'" Skenes says. "And at the end of the year we had a meeting, folks came me to saying, 'Hey, we think this would be good for you to implement.' Frankly, it was all stuff I had thought of, but they showed me the objective and the numbers, and projections and stuff like that, that showed it would work if I executed it."

The idea was to further complicate the calculus for batters by filling in a couple of gaps in his arsenal. They eventually agreed on adding a cutter and sinker.

"His cutter, which works like a gyro slider, is something we wanted him to consider, something to be more in-zone, more competitive," Marin says. "The slider he already has will be way more effective than it already is - I know that's crazy to say."

Skenes wants to induce more swings, which should result in quicker strikeouts and more weakly hit balls in play.

It's not that Skenes was inefficient last year. He averaged 16 pitches per inning, which was slightly better than the major-league average (16.4). But to chase his volume goals - combined with alleviating as much stress as possible from his arm - he must be even more efficient.

Only four starters reached 200 innings last season: Logan Gilbert, Logan Webb, Seth Lugo, and Zack Wheeler.

Gilbert averaged 14.6 pitches per inning, Lugo 15.1, Webb 15.6, and Wheeler 15.7.

The most innings thrown in a season in the last decade was 232 2/3 by Kershaw in 2015. He averaged 14.6 pitches per inning. David Price, the last pitcher to reach 240 innings (248 1/3 in 2014), averaged 15 per inning.

Skenes' early returns are excellent.

Teammate Andrew McCutchen stood in against him in live BP this spring and watched one fastball flash by in a blur before putting up a white flag. "I said, 'All right, this is just going to be a tracking thing for me,'" the veteran said.

Marin says Skenes' arsenal is now essentially complete.

"It's up and down, side to side, and back and forth," he says, covering all the ways Skenes' pitches can be paired off each other.

Opponents offered at Skenes' pitches 49.7% of the time last season, just above the MLB average (47%). This spring, in a small sample, Skenes increased the swing rate against him to 53%. His swing-and-miss rate is also up to an elite 16.4% from 13.1% last year.

No limits

Sitting in the scouting section at Pirates camp one day this spring, I ask a few evaluators in attendance for Skenes player comps.

"Josh Johnson at his peak," one says.

"He's like Goose Gossage breathing fire from the first pitch," another offers.

"I can't think of one," says a third after scouring his mental library.

Groomer adds: "People say, 'We're going to find the next Paul Skenes.' You never will. You have the perfect anatomical makeup plus the mindset has to be there. You can have a whole other person (who) is also amazing, but you'll never find another Paul. The thing you gotta know is he's trying to be above the 1%. He's trying to be the best of all time every day, at every moment."

Near the conclusion of his brief media availability at the Topps event, Skenes is asked how often he felt overmatched as a rookie.

"I really didn't," he says.

Realizing that might seem brash, he adds: "I think that's kind of what guides us to the major leagues, is not having that feeling."

There's no question about his talent. The only question is whether Skenes' body can handle what he'll ask it to do.

Back when Pittsburgh had the No. 1 pick in June 2023, there was a debate over whether it should take Skenes or the perceived safer pick of a college bat, like his LSU teammate Dylan Crews.

I asked GM Ben Cherington if he thinks Skenes has a reasonable chance to beat the odds and become a durable workhorse or if it's simply an unknown.

"Certainly, the physical part - he's a big, strong guy - great athlete, good mover," Cherington says.

"And to some degree, you're betting on the human being and the work ethic."

Travis Sawchik is theScore's senior baseball writer.