A Look At Paul Skenes

Paul Skenes, the highly touted number one overall pick of the 2023 MLB draft, just made his Major League debut yesterday. The flame-throwing sensation and former college baseball World Series champion played in a short but dominant 12 games during his minor league career—12! In my opinion, he probably could’ve come up and been just fine with half that many, if not none. As of right now, Paul Skenes is everything you could want in a pitcher, and I really have nothing but good things to say about him. The focus of this post, however, is not to praise Paul and his impressive talents, but instead to use him as an example of what an elite baseball talent looks like and to hopefully put into perspective what it’s going to take for aspiring young ball players to make it to both the college level and beyond.

The level of high school baseball that you play is often out of your control as a player but is very important when talking about recruitment and exposure. For example, if you played in a premier high school league and struck out 10 batters in a game, it would hold a lot more weight in the eyes of recruiters than if you played in a weak league and struck out 14. Skenes had the luxury of playing at El Toro High School in Southern California, which has been a powerhouse in baseball over the last 16 years! El Toro has produced many MLB players such as Nolan Arenado (Cardinals), Matt Chapman (Giants), Austin Romine (Yankees), Blake Taylor (Astros), as well as dozens of active minor league players. Playing at an elite high school does a couple of things for you as a player: 1) you're constantly competing against other elite schools that likely carry a handful of both future Division 1 baseball talents and very often 1 or 2 MLB prospects. 2) You’re constantly playing in front of scouts, whether you want to or not; there is a lot of exposure to the next level.

Does it surprise you that Paul Skenes pitched just 26 innings his senior year of high school? That’s right, the #1 overall pick in the 2023 draft only pitched 26 innings during his senior year. It may surprise you, but it doesn't always take throwing the most innings on your team to get noticed. To a trained eye, it’s going to take all of 1 inning to see if a guy has the right stuff to play at the next level or not.

What’s the right stuff? Some traits as ballplayers are out of our control, height being one of them. Skenes has the luxury of being 6 feet 6 inches. Like it or not, that’s a very attractive stat when looking at a pitcher. As you likely know, he also has a fastball that averages 100 mph, as well as a wipe-out slider and devastating changeup. Paul hit the jackpot of skills acquired and physical traits present, but let’s take a quick look at things that he did that every player is capable of. Command—it’s not something that happens by accident. Please trust me when I say that there are plenty of 100 mph+ flamethrowers out there that you’ve never heard of due to the fact that they have no clue where the ball is going to end up. The other thing that Paul has that anyone can develop are his off-speed pitches. Don’t kid yourself by thinking that some people just have a nasty changeup or slider and others don’t; it’s a learnable skill, and I highly recommend that if you’re a pitcher, you begin to develop that skill, especially if you aren’t throwing serious heat. The last thing I want to touch on is his physical state. Paul is 6’6", 235 lbs with a lower body built like a true power athlete. Achieving this is achieved by very hard work and consistency in the gym. The number of players that tell me they want to play at the next level yet “don’t have time to work out” or “just hate training legs” is countless. The truth is, in order to not only make it to the next level but to be successful at that level means you cannot leave any stone unturned. It’s 2024, there’s no lack of knowledge available, no lack of gyms available for this to be an excuse if you’re wanting to continue beyond high school baseball.

The last thing I want to mention about Paul is the lack of showboating, the lack of attention-seeking, the lack of controversy that comes with all of his star power. Paul didn’t get to where he’s at due to excessive eye black, the latest sliding mitt, or even a mullet. That’s because those things aren’t important when it comes to baseball. They’ve become the easy way to give off the appearance of having talent versus actually having it. I would love for young ballplayers to look up to Paul Skenes as an example of how to go about the game. Twelve minor league games before breaking into the MLB doesn’t happen by accident, so if I were a young ballplayer, I’d start to pay attention to how he did it.