Pirates manager opens up on protecting Paul Skenes after dominant rookie season

Pittsburgh Pirates manager Derek Shelton said his coaching staff will need to protect pitching phenom Paul Skenes and manage his workload to keep him available throughout the season.

Shelton feels Skenes has worked hard during the offseason to continue developing from his outstanding rookie campaign, but the Pirates will still need to give him some extra rest when they can.

Paul Skenes was selected by the Pittsburgh Pirates as the No. 1 overall pick of the 2023 MLB Draft and went on to make his big league debut in May last year. The 22-year-old sensation produced a dominant campaign and got the nod to start in the All-Star Game before ending the season as the 2024 National League Rookie of the Year.

On Friday, Derek Shelton had an interview with MLB Network at the Pirates camp in Bradenton, Florida. He discussed the need for protecting Paul Skenes from overexertion.

"We have to just be mindful," Shelton said. "We were very thoughtful about what we did with him last year. Sometimes, it came with a critique, but at the end of the day, it worked out well. This year, we'll also look for those days. But we also know he's put in the work to go out there."

The Pirates had offered Skenes a $9.2 million signing bonus upon joining the organization, the largest sum ever handed out to a drafted player.

Paul Skenes adds two new pitches to his arsenal in spring training

Paul Skenes is the fifth rookie pitcher in the MLB to start an All-Star game (Image Source: IMAGN)

The pitch repertoire of Paul Skenes consisted of a four-seamer that topped out at triple digits with a sweeper and his signature pitch called the 'splinker,' a hybrid between a splitter and a sinker.

The Pittsburgh Pirates phenom revealed adding two more pitches to his arsenal, a cutter and a two-seam fastball, for the upcoming campaign.

"I didn’t have anything like that before, and it was kind of like, "Well, I throw 100. Why don’t I throw a 90 mph slider," basically?" Skenes said regarding his cutter after his spring training outing on Thursday.

"Why don’t I throw a breaking ball that’s around 90? Because I can. My sweeper was around 85 last year, and so that’s part of it, but the sweeper is so big that if I don’t get any swings on the cutter, it’s still going to get me swings on the sweeper."

Skenes made 23 starts for the Pirates last year and posted an 11-3 record with 5.9 bWAR for the season. He pitched 133.0 innings, with a 1.96 ERA and 0.947 WHIP to finish in third place in the NL Cy Young race.