BRADENTON, Fla. — Before the meme, there was the announcement. Here was Paul Skenes, live on MLB Network. Cal Ripken Jr., the Hall of Fame shortstop, set the scene: The winner of the 2024 National League Jackie Robinson Rookie of the Year is … Paul Skenes.
The camera cut to Skenes and his girlfriend, gymnast and influencer Olivia Dunne, on a brown leather couch. Dunne smiled, clapped and placed her hand on Skenes’ shoulder. Skenes, wearing a gray suit jacket and white dress shirt, sat there. Aside from his “Top Gun” mustache, his face was as blank as a Word document with a blinking cursor. After what felt like an eternity, he nodded and curled the corners of his lips, thoroughly unimpressed with his accomplishments. The internet was soon ablaze with pictures, GIFs and commenters cackling at Skenes’ nonchalance. Dunne shared screen grabs to her social media, a tank of gasoline into a volcano.
That viral snapshot, superficial as it might seem, encapsulates Skenes’ warp-speed rise. Three years ago, he was an Air Force Academy cadet. Now he is the most exciting pitcher in baseball.
After winning NL rookie of the year, posting a 1.96 ERA and dominating his first 23 major league starts, Skenes enters his sophomore MLB season as perhaps the game’s most enticing attraction not named Shohei Ohtani. The binary emotional setting of his award-winning moment — composure amid elation — highlights the growing contradictions of Paul Skenes mania.
Consider all of the following: He is a star of the online age. His wicked pitches are constant fodder for the Pitching Ninja account on the social platform X. His girlfriend has more than 13 million followers on social media. Skenes, of course, does not keep social media apps on his phone.
Recently, he was announced alongside Gunnar Henderson and Elly De La Cruz as one of three young stars on the cover of this year’s edition of “MLB: The Show.” Although he puts up silly numbers in real life — striking out 11.5 batters per nine innings — Skenes does not play video games. He says he does not have the finger dexterity for it.
Last season, he became one of only 10 pitchers ever to receive votes for rookie of the year, Cy Young and most valuable player in the same season. He is a flamethrower but plays for one of MLB’s most desolate franchises. The Pittsburgh Pirates have not made the playoffs since 2015 and have not signed a free agent to a multiyear contract since December 2016. This generational pitching talent still carries himself like a cadet, more comfortable as part of a group than under a spotlight.
Ripe as the Skenes mythos is for promotion, the Pirates practically shooed away reporters and cameras in the early days of spring training. Working with a short-handed public relations staff, managing Skenes’ media workload proved a huge task.
At a Topps baseball card event one Saturday night, a few hundred eager fans awaited his presence. Despite his reluctance in the spotlight, Skenes smiled and showed the crowd some personality. He tossed a pack of cards into the madness. True to form, despite the fact that an 11-year-old pulling his MLB debut card made national news this offseason, Skenes has zero interest in baseball cards.
These events and this type of hysteria, though, are functions of his new reality. “It’s not playing baseball,” he said. “But it’s part of the job at this point.”
No more jets
In the Pirates’ media workroom, everyone is waiting on Skenes. Despite being a young player in MLB’s fourth-smallest media market, he does not generally do interviews as needed; this year, he scheduled blocks of them on certain days for maximum efficiency. Thus the crowd.
As more marketing opportunities come his way, he has begun saying no to them more often than he says yes. He hoped to wrap up all his business dealings before spring training. The sheer volume made that impossible.
This whole vortex accelerated rapidly last summer. Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo tabbed Skenes to start the All-Star Game, making him only the fifth rookie in MLB history to earn the honor. “Paul is everything right about this game,” Lovullo said.
Then there was “Late Night With Seth Meyers” and the video game cover shoot. He met Kenny Chesney. He got a message from Shaquille O’Neal asking about a shoe deal. (O’Neal is with Reebok; Skenes is signed with Nike.) Last fall at Louisiana State, he and Dunne appeared as guest pickers on “College GameDay.” They were photographed sitting together at the Super Bowl, Kevin Costner and Pete Davidson right behind them. It’s all still odd for a 22-year-old who never envisioned this would be his life. “I thought I’d be flying jets,” Skenes said.
Skenes went to El Toro High School in Lake Forest, California. His college decision was between Air Force and Navy. He chose Air Force, where he played catcher in addition to pitching. By the end of his sophomore year, after making two All-American teams and winning the John Olerud Award as the best two-way player in college baseball, it became clear that jets were no longer in his immediate future. Neither was catcher’s gear. If Skenes stayed at the Air Force for his junior year, he would have been required to graduate from the academy and could have been subjected to service enlistment.
He transferred to LSU, became a full-time pitcher and promptly transformed into a beast of the highest degree. A friend was dating Elena Marenas, Dunne’s roommate and LSU gymnastics teammate. Soon Skenes and Dunne were the biggest sports celebrity couple this side of Kansas City, Missouri. Under pitching coach Wes Johnson, who had worked for the Minnesota Twins, it took no time for Skenes’ fastball to gain even more life and for his secondary pitches to gain even more spin and break using the school’s world-class pitching lab.
Looking to improve
His first outing of spring training, scheduled to be on MLB Network, was rained out. A week later in Sarasota, Florida, again on a national broadcast, here was Skenes with his fearsome delivery portending power. His fastball averaged 98.9 mph last season, the highest average velocity of any regular MLB starting pitcher.
His trademark pitch, the so-called splinker, which moves to his arm side like a sinker but tumbles like a lethal splitter, comes in at 94 mph. He also has a curveball, slider, sweeper and changeup. This offseason, he began toying with a cutter and a two-seam fastball. The cutter in particular is drawing rave reviews.
From his first phone call with Skenes in the summer of 2023, Pirates manager Derek Shelton said he could sense the pitcher had a particularly focused mentality. In an early meeting with player development staffers, Skenes groused about needing a better offering against left-handers. That conversation became the genesis of the splinker.
“He’s always trying to figure out, ‘OK, what’s my process to continue to get better?’” Shelton said. “And it’s really rare that a young player is that honest with himself.”
The Pirates, not yet fully emerged from a brutal rebuild, selected Skenes No. 1 overall less than two years ago. He quickly became the franchise’s greatest asset, the rising tide that could lift all their ships.
His bosses feel the responsibility that comes with his presence. Arms as powerful as his tend to be breakable things. Can they manage his workload, keep him healthy and help him reach his ceiling?
“In a good way, it forces us to stay open-minded about ‘OK, how do we keep challenging not just him, but all of us, to be even better?’” said the team’s general manager, Ben Cherington.
Skenes, meanwhile, is still navigating his newfound stardom. Quiet by nature, he has set a goal of becoming more of a vocal presence.
“It goes naturally,” Skenes said. “Can’t go in there and call five team meetings in the first five days.” Again, the corners of his lips turned upward. He deadpanned, “I tried it. It didn’t work.”
This is a lot of hype for a pitcher who has thrown only 133 MLB innings. His goal this year is to function like an old-school workhorse starter in an era when rocket launchers like him succumb to elbow injuries at an alarming rate. Last season, he got to meet Hall of Famer Randy Johnson, who told him: Don’t let anyone put limits on you.
Skenes is now learning how to fit into his stature as one of the game’s best. Roberto Clemente, who was known for his humanitarian efforts, serves as a role model. Last season, Skenes donated $100 for each of his 170 strikeouts to the Gary Sinise Foundation, helping veterans and emergency medical workers. When considering partnerships, he often asks sponsors to donate to the foundation.
This winter, Skenes was elected to the players association’s executive subcommittee, which represents players in collective bargaining and union governance.
“Clemente had an enormous impact on the field,” Skenes said. “Off the field, he was also a PA guy, and he made things better for us as players now because of his sacrifices then. It’s about paying forward. I think that’s a responsibility that I have.”
Skenes is already a beneficiary of the players union’s victories from the most recent collective bargaining agreement. Despite spending only 142 days in the major leagues, he was awarded a full year of MLB service as a reward for finishing as a top-two rookie of the year vote-getter.
The public role may seem unexpected. But being an advocate for players suits his style more than smiling for cameras.
“Whether I like it or not, I think I’m in a position of leadership in Major League Baseball,” Skenes said. “Guys are going to listen to me, so I think it’s better to lean into it and have the position than hide from that role.” He added, “The earlier I get involved, the better. I wasn’t expecting to be on the subcommittee, but here I am.”
At an awards dinner in New York City this winter, Skenes accepted his Rookie of the Year Award, the same one he once seemed so unenthusiastic to win. In front of reporters and some of the best baseball players in the world, he gave a heartfelt speech, thanking his parents, girlfriend, coaches and old pals in the Air Force.
He also grabbed headlines with his message to award voters: “It is my goal and intention,” he said, “to make the voting very easy for you in the coming years.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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