MILWAUKEE -- Andrew McCutchen knows. He's been there. He's been the man. National League MVP, face of the franchise, all that.
And this, as he'd freely acknowledge for me ... this is different.
"I mean it's made for TV, you know?" he'd say at his stall while watching Paul Skenes still taking questions a few feet away, and this after all Skenes achieved on this Thursday afternoon at American Family Field was to no-hit the Brewers through seven innings and whip up 11 more strikeouts amid what'd wind up a 1-0 whitewash for the Pirates. "It's, like, 'What are you gonna get? What's gonna be next?' "
Cutch paused, glanced Skenes' way and nodded.
"He's putting himself in a place to where the expectations ... they've always been high, but they're going to continue to climb," Cutch continued. "People are gonna have an expectation every time of him going out and doing what he's doing. And he just seems to continue to get better, not necessarily by what he's doing as far as his numbers, but the way I'm looking at it, it's how he's sequencing his pitches."
Yes, this. So much this. I felt like I knew what was coming.
"When he needs to get the big pitch, he gets it. He gets the big out. That’s what I’m seeing. He’s not up there trying to strike out everybody. He’s just trusting his stuff and throwing."
My friends, I'm speechless.
Let's take a breath here. Together, OK?
All right. Now ... look, I could just as easily leave this column screen blank and summarize what I felt upon witnessing Skenes' latest bit of brilliance. If only because, if I'm being honest, I'm uncomfortable with the adjectives I'd apply. They're adjectives I've reserved for the best of the best I've covered. Sidney Crosby. Evgeni Malkin. Ben Roethlisberger. T.J. Watt. Troy Polamalu. The absolute best of Antonio Brown. And, of course, peak Cutch. (No, I'll never, ever compare anyone to the name I'm omitting, but that's hardly some slight.)
But it's at that level. Here's all 11:
All 11 strikeouts during Paul Skenes' seven no-hit innings! pic.twitter.com/zxcFTLlU5S
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) July 11, 2024
And the script only strengthens with each passing chapter.
In this one, the Brewers, the Central Division's runaway leader on offensive merit, smartly worked Skenes to a pitch count of 63 through three innings. Good takes. Really good foul-offs. Probably thought they'd chase him, too.
Nope. Only a hot-knife-through-butter 36 more pitches over his final four innings, each of them perfect.
“Impressive," the Brewers' manager, Pat Murphy, would tell Milwaukee reporters. "Impressive all the way around. Secondary pitches, heater, command, composure. I thought he was great.”
He wasn't done.
“He definitely adjusted. He realized where it was going, 63 pitches in three innings, he realized, ‘OK, I’ve got to do something a little different,’ and he did. That’s when you’ve got to get hits off him, but credit to him. That was the story of the game. He was dynamite.”
The adjustment wasn't much: Skenes and Yasmani Grandal shared a few words in the dugout following the third, and they agreed to attack. To be more aggressive with the heat, which is how his selection chart emerged as follows:
BASEBALL SAVANT
"Nothing was really too different," Grandal would say. "We just needed to make some quick adjustments, and we were able to do that. Obviously, we didn’t want to, but we wasted a lot of pitches early on. We were trying to get early contact, but they just kept fouling a lot of things off. Some days, that’s going to happen. I was just glad he was able to battle through it."
“Yeah, I had to grind through those first few innings," Skenes would say. "But got a couple quick innings in there. Just came down to executing.”
Uh-huh.
“Not much really affects him," Derek Shelton would say to this. "I think that’s the most important thing. He gave up a leadoff home run a couple starts ago ... didn’t affect him. He’s given up two runs in the first ... didn’t affect him. He's done a really good job of taking all the noise of being 1-1 in the draft, of being off to this start to his career, and he focuses on pitching. I think that’s really important, and I think that’s really special. I don’t think you see a lot of guys like that.”
A lot? How about any?
Through 11 starts ...
• Innings: 66 1/3
• Strikeouts: 89
• Walks: 13
• Hits: 48
• Home runs: 7
• ERA: 1.90
• Opponent slash: .202/.251/.319
• Average fastball velocity: 99.1 mph
And for all the reams and reams of historical data that follows each of these, my favorite from this: In Major League Baseball's modern era, meaning from 1900 onward, one pitcher has had two road starts over the course of an entire career in which he struck out 10-plus, walked one or fewer, and didn't allow a hit.
Take a wild guess. Or go ask if the Cubs still remember May 17 at Wrigley.
GETTY
Paul Skenes pitches in the second inning Thursday in Milwaukee.
I mean ... what is this?
Is anyone still debating whether Skenes should've been an All-Star? Or whether he should start for the National League next week in Arlington? Or whether or not he'll be in the Cy Young chase? Or whether or not he's already the greatest pitcher in the 143-year existence of the Pittsburgh Baseball Club? Or, as long as everything's so far over the top as to be unrecognizable, whether or not that's already Cooperstown on Line 1?
I canvassed the clubhouse ...
"He’s ... an incredible player. And what he's doing is really special," Connor Joe would reply before embarking on a pause so long my phone's battery might've died. It's that hard, people. "But I also want to say here that he works really hard. It’s by no accident he’s doing this."
"It's obviously very impressive," Jack Suwinski would reply, failing to suppress a laugh at the understatement. "It's unlike a lot of the things you've seen before."
"Crazy," Nick Gonzales would reply. "Just crazy, man."
Now, take that cumulative sentiment and multiply by, oh, about 30 to picture what it would've been like had Skenes been able -- or allowed, to better phrase it -- finish a no-hitter.
Alas, it stopped being 1964 about a half-century ago, so wasting so much as a syllable on the perils of pushing flamethrowers well into triple-digit pitch counts deserves to be buried deep in the sport's past. But also, per Shelton, he and Oscar Marin detected signs of fatigue, making it academic to pull him after seven.
Did Shelton even think about another inning?
“Not at all," he'd come back without hesitation. "He was tired. It really didn’t have anything to do with the pitch count. Everybody makes it about pitch counts. It was about where he was at. It was about trusting your eyes, trusting him when I went and talked to him after that. He was tired. They did a good job of wearing him down. He gave us everything he had.”
I asked Skenes about this, of course, and his answer was what one would hope to hear from any starter:
“Yeah, definitely wanted to finish it," he'd reply, having noted later that he's never pitched a no-hitter at any level. "But throwing every six days, five days, whatever it is now ... I definitely understand that side of it.”
Good for him on both counts. If he was getting one more inning, he wasn't getting two. Nothing to see here.
And hey, it had to help that, just before his exit, Grandal had given the Pirates the lead with a rocketed RBI double to right-center and that, after his exit, Colin Holderman left the bases loaded with a sizzling strikeout of William Contreras, and Aroldis Chapman blew the Brewers away 1-2-3 for the save.
“That’s their job, and they do it really well," Skenes would say when I raised that. "Wasn’t worried at all when I came out of the game.”
So, as Cutch put it, what's gonna be next for this kid?
It's not as if he can be much better, though it's pretty neat that Grandal acknowledged pushing Skenes to last longer in games in a talk they'd had over the weekend. It's not as if he can throw harder, exhibit better control, strike out many more ... or steal the spotlight at an All-Star Game before he's halfway through his rookie season.
Observing him as I've done since his arrival, what strikes me more than anything is the ease with which he ... I was about to say accepts, but that's not it ... it's the ease with which he embraces it. He gets that he's bound for greatness. And as with those other names listed above, he wants it. He's eager to work for it. He's willing to put in whatever's needed.
But still, my God, it's not supposed to look this easy, never mind be this easy.
Which I had to mention in asking if anyone anywhere informs him of this.
“Not really," he'd reply with an expressionless shake of the head. "Like I've said, it just comes down to executing. There are days where it’s gonna be better than others. Having all your weapons helps, and that’s kind of how it was today.”
Uh-huh. Just that.
Meanwhile, way out in Phoenix at pretty much the same time, Torey Lovullo, manager of the Diamondbacks and the National League All-Stars, told reporters he'll take his time in choosing his starter: "I want to hit just right on the sweet spot. We want the world to watch this game. And I want to make sure that I take my time before I make the decision."
I know someone who'd raise those ratings. Made for TV, even.
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