Paul Skenes had plenty of run support in the Pirates' 16-5 win over the Nationals on Monday night at PNC Park. Even so, the Pirates' ace turned in six strong innings, giving up just one run with six strikeouts and one walk. But, he did it in a bit of a different way than usual.
Of Skenes' 88 pitches, 32 of them were changeups -- more than any other pitch he threw Monday night and a career-high in using that pitch. And with the changeup, he generated 10 whiffs on 19 swings, a ridiculous 53% whiff rate.
"Just felt good with it. I felt like it was executed pretty well," Skenes said. "We flipped the script a little bit. (It'll) probably change the way we might look at pitching a little bit."
Perhaps one of the reasons Skenes went away from as many fastballs was because CJ Abrams took him deep on a middle-middle four-seamer with two outs in the first inning. It was the only hit Skenes gave up all night. But when a pitch is generating as much swing-and-miss as his changeup was tonight, as Skenes said, he could consider using it more often moving forward.
"Yeah, we might go out next outing and only throw changeups," Skenes said with a smile. "It worked well today, so just go Tommy Kahnle with it and just keep throwing changeups. 100 in a row. Why not?"
THE ASYLUM
Skenes rides changeup over six strong innings
Paul Skenes had plenty of run support in the Pirates' 16-5 win over the Nationals on Monday night at PNC Park. Even so, the Pirates' ace turned in six strong innings, giving up just one run with six strikeouts and one walk. But, he did it in a bit of a different way than usual.
Of Skenes' 88 pitches, 32 of them were changeups -- more than any other pitch he threw Monday night and a career-high in using that pitch. And with the changeup, he generated 10 whiffs on 19 swings, a ridiculous 53% whiff rate.
"Just felt good with it. I felt like it was executed pretty well," Skenes said. "We flipped the script a little bit. (It'll) probably change the way we might look at pitching a little bit."
Perhaps one of the reasons Skenes went away from as many fastballs was because CJ Abrams took him deep on a middle-middle four-seamer with two outs in the first inning. It was the only hit Skenes gave up all night. But when a pitch is generating as much swing-and-miss as his changeup was tonight, as Skenes said, he could consider using it more often moving forward.
"Yeah, we might go out next outing and only throw changeups," Skenes said with a smile. "It worked well today, so just go Tommy Kahnle with it and just keep throwing changeups. 100 in a row. Why not?"
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