LOS ANGELES — Paul Skenes fell behind in the count 3-1 to Shohei Ohtani in Friday’s fifth inning and could think of only one thing:
“Crap.”
At that point, the Pittsburgh Pirates‘ young ace thought he had nothing to lose. He vowed to attack.
“Let’s see what I’m made of,” Skenes recalled telling himself. “Let’s see where my stuff is.”
Skenes dotted his infamous splinker on the outer edge of the strike zone to run the count full, then unleashed a devastating curveball that started down the middle and ended near Ohtani’s shoe tops, generating an ugly swing to highlight a delightful outing.
With close to 40 friends and family members crammed into a suite at Dodger Stadium, Skenes, a product of neighboring Orange County, twirled 6⅓ scoreless innings against the reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers, outdueling a previously dominant Yoshinobu Yamamoto and leading the Pirates to a 3-0 win.
Skenes scattered five hits, walked none, struck out nine and lowered his ERA to 2.39 through the first six starts of his highly anticipated second season. He did it by commanding a wide variety of pitches. The fastball consistently flirted with 100 mph and the splinker displayed its usual nastiness. But the curveball looked as good as it had all year, and the sweeper, changeup and sinker continually kept the Dodgers’ hitters guessing. Skenes recorded at least one out with all six of those pitches.
“He’s 22 years old,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said, “but his ability to mix and match is very special for someone with this little major league experience.”
Skenes took the industry by storm last year while starting the All-Star Game, becoming the National League Rookie of the Year and finishing third in Cy Young voting. But the Dodgers gave him trouble. In two starts against them — one at home and one on the road — he allowed seven runs in 11 innings, two of which came on a prodigious home run by Ohtani.
On Friday, Skenes retired Ohtani all three times he faced him. He got him to fly out on a fastball in the first, ground out on a changeup in the third and strike out on a curveball in the fifth. Each of those at-bats lasted six pitches. Freddie Freeman, who recorded two hits, saw a combined 15.
“This is where baseball gets really fun, I think, to find different ways to get them out,” Skenes said. “Ohtani saw all my pitches today. Freddie, I think, saw all my pitches today. They’ve all seen all my pitches. I’m not hiding anything from them, and they’re not hiding anything from me.”
The Dodgers’ biggest threat came in the fourth, when Freeman lined a ball down the right-field line that ricocheted off the corner, snuck under Bryan Reynolds‘ glove and allowed him to reach third base with none out. But Skenes followed by recording three consecutive outs to escape without trouble. The first out set the tone. Skenes attacked Teoscar Hernandez with back-to-back sinkers, a pitch he didn’t develop until last offseason. It did precisely as it was intended — generate quick, weak contact, this time a slow roller to third.
“He can get in a jam and get himself out of a jam because he has plus-plus-plus pitches,” teammate Trent Grisham said. “That’s the benefit of someone with his repertoire.”
Skenes worked around a baserunner in the fifth and sixth innings, generating four of his six outs on strikeouts. When he was finished, his pitch count stood at 103. But Shelton sent him out for the seventh for one batter, right-handed-hitting catcher Will Smith, which would then allow the manager to bring in a lefty reliever to face the two left-handed bats that followed. Skenes’ fifth pitch to Smith was his 108th of the night, one more than his previous career high.
It was a splinker that ran well inside, generated another strikeout and triggered applause from a sold-out visiting crowd that couldn’t help but appreciate such mastery.
“I was a little bit surprised,” Skenes said of being called back out for the seventh inning, “but I was fired up. I know this is never going to happen, but I really do feel like I’m built and conditioned to throw 140, 150 [pitches]. I know that happens in college; it doesn’t happen in the big leagues anymore. I’m not going to say no when they ask me to face another hitter, to go back out there for another inning. And it’s weird — a lot of the times I feel better in the sixth or seventh than I do in the first. That was the case tonight.”
