It's been quite the ascent for Skenes. He didn't crack the top five in our May rookie poll (because, well, he hadn't debuted yet), then vaulted to No. 3 in June, and now he's reached the summit as the runaway leader for July. Though somewhat surprising, it's also not all that unexpected.
Skenes and his consistent triple-digit fastball, devastating split finger and unique "splinker" came with the kind of hype that can be hard for players to live up to. But Skenes has matched the hype so far. His average 99.2 mph fastball velocity is in baseball's 99th percentile and his 34.1 percent strikeout rate is also among MLB's best. He's 4-0 with a 2.06 ERA in nine starts for the Pirates and has 70 strikeouts in 52 1/3 innings. In other words, he's everything the Pirates – and baseball fans – hoped he'd be.
https://www.mlb.com/news/luis-gil-paul-skenes-hold-big-leads-in-latest-rookie-of-the-year-poll
4 comments
Yeah I think Skenes wins ROY at this point, he’s simply too good of a player to not win ROY. I don’t think he’s capable of having a start of giving up more than like 3-4 runs. He’s an elite pitcher already, he’s been elite from the second he started in the MLB.
Only way it sucks is that it gives him a full year of service, meaning the Pirates will have him (and Jones, for that matter) for only 6 years instead of 7 years.
Tbh, skenes winning ROY wouldn’t be worth the extra draft pick for the lost year of control
I’d be happy for Skenes to win ROY. We as Pirates fans don’t get to see a lot of individual hardware going out to our players. It would suck to lose that extra year of control but also maybe it’ll light a fire under managements ass to start building around him before they lose him (doubt it though), or maybe Nutting does an extremely smart move and sign Paul to a long term deal sooner rather than later. The Royals did it with Witt Jr and it looks like it’s going to be a steal for them, plus Witt got multi generational wealth before even playing a full season. He got 11 years 288 million. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to sign Paul for like 8-9 years and somewhere between 250-300 million. I would call that fair value for the Pirates and I’d imagine that would be kind of tough for Paul to turn down considering injury concerns, plus he would still be plenty young enough to get another big 3rd contract. If Nutting was smart he would realize that Skenes puts asses in seats and eyes on TVs.. and Nutting is smart.. I just don’t know if he cares.
That’s pretty crazy considering how everyone thought Imanga had that locked down two months into the season.