Noah is a senior at NASH and in his second year writing for The Uproar. He has major interests in: Baseball, Golf, Pickleball, and College Basketball. In college, he hopes to work in media and writing related to athletics. He is also a diehard Seattle Mariners fan.
The location: PNC Park, Pittsburgh, Pa. The date: May 11th 2024. The time: 4:05 PM local. The man of the hour: Paul Skenes.
Now, I’m not going to mince words here. This is the biggest debut that baseball has seen since the Washington Nationals’ Steven Strasburg took the mound on “Strasmas,” June 8th 2010.
To illustrate the point, the combined attendance for the other two games of the Cubs-Pirates series last weekend didn’t match the total that showed up to watch Skenes pitch on Saturday.
Skenes had arrived, and so did the media, along with 35,000 faithful Pirates fans hoping that they had just laid eyes on the savior of their franchise.
One of the many reasons Skenes’ debut was so anticipated throughout the baseball world was that, coming into the 2023 MLB draft, he was the no-brainer first overall pick out of LSU, after winning a National Championship and being awarded the Dick Hoswer Trophy, awarded to the nation’s best player. His subsequent surge through the minors found him in the major leagues just ten months after being drafted.
Craig Counsell and the Cubs gave Skenes a mix of right- and left-handed batters, making his first big league start a bit of a challenge against the NL Central’s best team. But Skenes was ready. The first pitch he threw in a Pirates uniform was clocked at 101 mph, the fifth fastest pitch in Pirates history since they started tracking in 2008. His second pitch? 101.1 Fourth fastest. You get the deal, as Skenes made easy work of the Cubs’ firs three hitters, striking out two in the first inning.
The rest of the game was more of the same. Skenes continued to show off his serious heat, recording 17 pitches over the 100 mph plateau, while also throwing five of the six fastest pitches ever recorded by a Pittsburgh Pirate.
As Saturday was Skenes’ first start in the majors, he was on a certain innings/pitch restriction to avoid the risk of injury. So Skenes’ day ended prematurely at the top of the fifth inning, after back-to-back Cubs hits. Four innings pitched, seven strikeouts, one earned run, three allowed.
But his impact on the game went far past the box score, as the energy surrounding him was absorbed by the other Pirates, who would go on to win 10-9 after a lengthy rain delay.
Skenes’ debut was a major success, and in my opinion, the most energetic the park has been in over a decade. Skenes brings an aura to this team that they have desperately needed, announcing to the baseball world that we are going to win and win soon.
Even though the entirety of this day was built around Skenes, it was a monumental one for the Pirates. When you get a talent such as Paul Skenes, you absolutely have to build a winning team and culture around him, and you have to do it fast.
With the Pirates franchise trending in the right direction, a new era has begun, closing the door on the days of prime McCutchen and Cole. Recently locking down star players such as Bryan Reynolds and Ke’Bryan Hayes and having four players in MLB’s new pipeline top 100 prospects, featuring 2022 fourth overall pick Termarr Johnson shows real indication from ownership that we want to compete, and we want to win the World Series.
Will we see “Buctober” as soon as this year? Only time will tell, but Pirates fans will be able to sleep well at night knowing they have Paul Skenes in black and gold.