ARLINGTON -- Paul Skenes has a 6-0 record and 1.90 ERA in his first 11 MLB starts. He has 89 strikeouts in 66 1/3 innings. He has a fastball few can touch and a “splinker” none had seen. He has a famous girlfriend. He has the distinction of becoming the first player to reach the Midsummer Classic the year after going No. 1 overall in the MLB Draft. And he has the starting assignment for the National League on Tuesday in the All-Star Game presented by Mastercard.

But there’s something else Skenes has that is not getting nearly the attention it deserves.

Paul Skenes has a mustache.

“I like his mustache,” Skenes’ teammate and fellow NL All-Star Bryan Reynolds said. “It’s just going to keep getting better, too.”

Granted, it’s no Rollie Fingers flamboyant handlebar. It’s not the Yosemite Sam-style ’stache once worn by 1800s heroes like Old Hoss Radbourn. In thickness and substantiality, it cannot yet rival what Keith Hernandez sported in his prime (or in the present day, for that matter). Rich Gossage will not be suing Skenes anytime soon for larceny of his look.

But because the Majors’ mustaches once worn so valiantly and victoriously by Dennis Eckersley, Wade Boggs, Don Mattingly, Robin Yount and, well, seemingly every star of the 1970s and ’80s had largely gone by the wayside in recent decades, this Skenes start seems significant. It seems to signal that a societal upswing for the ’stache has begun to broach the big leagues. (According to September 2022 data from Gillette, 9.6% of the U.S. male population had a mustache, an increase of 1.5% from March 2020.)

While what you will witness Tuesday night at Globe Life Field cannot possibly rival certain Midsummer nights past that qualify not just as All-Star Games but All-Stache Games, we might just be at the beginning of MLB’s mustache renaissance -- a fitting fashion trend in the year that Jim Leyland enters the Hall of Fame and an interesting accompaniment to rule changes that have guided the game back to its 1980s pace and propensity for stolen bases.

“The mustache and the long hair is coming back,” said Giants All-Star ace Logan Webb. “It’s good to see.”

You see it in that loaded young lineup the Orioles are trotting out. Much has been made of the O’s having a type, as Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Heston Kjerstad and Jackson Holliday all have that light curled hair, those high cheekbones and those innocent eyes. (Vance Honeycutt, their first selection in the 2024 MLB Draft, is going to fit right in.)

But you might have noticed that Henderson has strayed a bit from his fellow blondies this year by sporting a ’stache.

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“Out of Spring Training, I had the goatee going and was going to shave it, just because,” said Henderson, who took a .957 OPS and 28 homers into his All-Star and Home Run Derby appearances. “My fiancée said, ‘You should just leave the mustache.’ So I left it and was doing good to start the year. So I kept it.”

And now that look is spreading amongst the O’s.

“Austin Hays had one to start, and so did John Means,” said mustachioed O’s All-Star infielder Jordan Westburg. “So you want to fit in in the clubhouse. I grew it in Spring Training for Mustache March, and it kind of bled into the season. It’s fitting for you, it works for you. It’s one of those things where I can’t shave it now.”

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“We do Mustache May in San Francisco,” said Webb. “It was at the end of the month, and I said, ‘I can’t wait to shave it.’ But my wife told me to keep it, so I kept it.”

Added Red Sox All-Star starter Tanner Houck: “I can’t say I haven’t not gotten rid of it because of performance. But when the wife says it’s time to go, it will be time to go.”

Now, Houck is what you might call a quasi-stacher, of which there are a few on these rosters. There is no disputing that the hair above his upper lip is a distinct faction of facial hair, cut off around the edges of the upper lip. But then he also has another significant patch of hair coming off his chin.

“It’s not really a beard, but it’s not just a mustache,” he says. “It’s like a mustache with a billygoat.”

Guardians All-Star first baseman Josh Naylor has a similar styling, though his chin hair is not as pronounced as Houck’s. He said he does not identify himself as a member of the MLB mustache community, because his mustache is more a matter of unhairy happenstance.

“I don’t know why [the mustache is not connected to the chin hair],” Naylor said. “It just won’t connect yet.”

So whether to include Naylor, Houck, Braves ace Max Fried and any other All-Stars sporting the ’stache and chin hair combination is open to interpretation.

But Skenes, Webb, Henderson and Westburg are indisputably the real deal, graduates from the School of Stubble and recipients of their master’s in mustaching (a word we just made up). Had Braves ace Spencer Strider not gotten hurt (his elbow, not his mustache), it’s likely he’d be here among his fellow mustachioed men, too.

And there’s more where that came from. Braves prospect Drake Baldwin went deep in the Futures Game while rocking a ‘stache. Futures Game participant Dylan Crews, the Nationals prospect ranked No. 4 overall by MLB Pipeline, goes through various iterations of facial hair but has been known to wear a straightforward ‘stache. Guardians first-base prospect Kyle Manzardo (No. 35 overall) and White Sox right-handed prospect Drew Thorpe? ‘Stache guys.

The sport’s ‘stache stash is strong and, like the hair on an unshaven upper lip, growing.

“I do notice more ‘staches now,” said Henderson, “and I kind of look at it and grade people’s mustaches.”

Henderson refrained from offering up his grades. But to be here on this All-Star stage automatically qualifies the wearer of whiskers to an A+, in our opinion.

So when you watch Skenes make his much-heralded start on Tuesday night, salute his stuff, sure. But salute that ‘stache, too.