Paul Skenes is already trying to take his game to the next level.
Fresh off one of the best rookie campaigns from a pitcher in recent baseball history, the Pirates ace is adding two new weapons this spring — a cutter and a two-seam fastball.
Before this spring, Skenes already featured six pitches, including a 100-plus mph fastball, a “splinker,” and a sweeper.
Apparently, that wasn’t enough for the flame-throwing phenom.
“Really, [I’m] just trying to create more swing decisions,” Skenes told MLB.com last month. “That’s what it boils down to.”
After a three-inning start on Thursday, Skenes spoke with Yahoo Sports about his new cutter.
“I didn’t have anything like that before, and it was kind of like, ‘Well, I throw 100. Why don’t I throw a 90 mph slider,’ basically?” Skenes said. “Why don’t I throw a breaking ball that’s around 90? Because I can. My sweeper was around 85 last year, and so that’s part of it, but the sweeper is so big that if I don’t get any swings on the cutter, it’s still going to get me swings on the sweeper.”
Skenes dominated during his first year in the big leagues, posting a 1.96 ERA across 23 starts with 170 strikeouts in just 133 innings en route to the National League Rookie of the Year award.
In July, Skenes got the starting nod for the NL in the All-Star game, becoming the fourth rookie in MLB history to start the Midsummer Classic.
Skenes debuted with the Pirates barely a year after being drafted No. 1 overall out of LSU during the 2023 MLB Draft, living up to the massive hype that followed him throughout his college and minor league career.