Skenes caps brilliant rookie season with strikeout and a smile in Bronx

NEW YORK -- Paul Skenes’ smile told the whole story.

The Pirates' rookie right-hander had only two innings before he was going to be pulled from his final start of the season. The semi-fluid innings target for his first full professional season was the 155-165 range, and his two scoreless innings in the Pirates’ 9-4 win over the Yankees on Saturday put him at 160 1/3 between his time in Triple-A and the Majors.

But those two innings at Yankee Stadium, with girlfriend Livvy Dunne in attendance, were quite the exclamation point. After catching Juan Soto looking and Aaron Judge swinging in the first, Skenes finished his rookie campaign with a 99.6 mph fastball that caught the low inside corner to retire Jazz Chisholm Jr.

Skenes is almost always stoic on the mound, unflinching whether he has struck out the side or allowed a home run. Walking back to the visitor’s clubhouse this time, he was grinning ear to ear.

What a cap for a historic season.

“Definitely glad to be able to finish the season and be able to do it here,” Skenes said. “Cool to do it against this lineup. So [I] wish I could keep going, but that's where we're at."

Skenes’ rookie campaign will go down as one of the best ever for a Pirates pitcher, if not for any rookie pitcher. He finished with an 11-3 record, a 1.96 ERA, a 0.95 WHIP and 170 strikeouts over 133 innings pitched, an effort that should keep him at the heart of the National League Rookie of the Year discussion this offseason.

Skenes admits he hasn’t put much thought into being the Rookie of the Year to this point. That’ll probably change in the coming weeks.

“To have a sub-two ERA in his first year, especially in today's era, that's pretty special,” said manager Derek Shelton. “I think we're seeing a guy that's really elite, has the ability to make pitches and has room for growth. I think that's really fun for Pirates fans, if that's the case."

Shelton has more than two decades’ worth of Major League coaching experience, mainly with Cleveland and Tampa Bay. In that time, he saw plenty of great pitchers, including prime CC Sabathia, David Price and Chris Archer.

"That's a pretty good list of guys,” Shelton said, “and I would put him [Skenes] right at the top of that."

Getting Skenes through this first season in a position where he could continue to excel while setting him up for 2025 is certainly a huge win for the Pirates. There were grumbles when Skenes started the year with Triple-A Indianapolis, but that was to help him build up more gradually in his first full professional season.

When Skenes checked the boxes the club wanted to see, it called him up in mid-May, enough time where he could still be in a position to get a full year of service time if he finished in the top two for Rookie of the Year -- a virtual guarantee at this point -- while putting him in position to be the biggest arm in a talented rotation moving forward. It’s a win-win for both parties.

“We didn't know if it was going to be perfect,” Shelton said about the workload management plan. “I don't think anybody did. I realized people were going to be critical because they wanted to see him. We wanted to make sure we ramped him up. Even today, he finished the season strong. He finished the season on the mound. Overall, I think it stands out that it worked out pretty well."

Reflecting on the year that was, Skenes agreed that the plan did go pretty close to perfectly. Now he’s in a better position to just “take the ball and pitch” next year rather than have the looming cloud of innings totals hanging over him all season.

“We got right to where the innings threshold was,” Skenes said. “So frustrating first couple of months, but glad to be able to do what I did this year."

Skenes sees “some low-hanging fruit for me to be better [at] next year,” and that’s his new focus as he prepares for that 2025 campaign. Skenes’ season went about as well as anyone had hoped. What does a successful encore look like in his eyes?

"Win a lot of baseball games,” he answered.