ARLINGTON – Surely Rob Manfred and company had heard the cries — or even downright accusations — over the years. Major League Baseball doesn’t know how to market its stars! We’ve heard it from the masses for decades. I don’t necessarily agree with it, at least not over the last several years (remember the Let the Kids Play one?), but it’s a familiar talking point.
Those people should be singing the praises of Major League Baseball after the 2024 All-Star Game and I’m not even talking about Shohei Ohtani hitting a home run, which was all kinds of fun.
In the last several seasons, MLB has made a push to make the draft as big a deal as it possibly can. It now starts with the first round in primetime on the Sunday before the All-Star Game, in the same locale where the All-Star festivities are held. Paul Skenes out of LSU was the first overall pick in 2023 to great fanfare. In 2024, Skenes started the All-Star Game for the National League, making him the first No. 1 overall draft pick to be an All-Star the following season and the first rookie to start the Midsummer Classic since Hideo Nomo did so in 1995.
And in order, Skenes faced the MLB leader in hitting, one of the brightest young stars and two super-duper stars from the sports capital of the world from a team that is arguably the biggest marquee franchise in American sports.
We couldn’t have drawn it up much better, right?
Skenes has only made 11 MLB starts, but he’s 6-0 with a 1.90 ERA. The raw stuff matches the numbers, as does his knowledge and awareness despite being so inexperienced. Other players are in awe of him. Steven Kwan said it looks on TV like the pitches shouldn’t physically be able to do what they do. Christian Yelich said the action on Skenes’ sinker — some call it a splinker — is different every single time and marveled about how the young Pirates star works hitters. Yelich also commended Skenes for already being such an “advanced” pitcher.
We saw it on display in the first inning Tuesday night in Texas.
Skenes welcomed Guardians and AL leadoff man Kwan with a 98.2 miles-per-hour heater that looked effortless. Kwan leads the majors with a .352 average and is one of the toughest players to strikeout. Yet he looked a little silly in swinging through the sinker that followed to make it an 0-2 count. You don’t often get to say he looks foolish with a bat in his hands. He ended up putting a 99.9 mph fastball in play with a pop out.
Next up was Gunnar Henderson of the Orioles. He took the sinker for a strike on the first pitch, which is probably a good idea since he hasn’t previously seen that pitch, perhaps the nastiest one in baseball. Then Skenes blew a fastball by him. This is a guy hitting .286/.373/.584 with 28 homers and he looks like he has no idea what to do with his bat. Skenes ended up using the sinker to induce a 50 mph tapper right back to the mound. A harmless second out.
At this moment, it looked like we — and Major League Baseball — were going to lose out. That’s because the biggest star in the American League, Aaron Judge, was slotted in the cleanup spot in the lineup by Rangers manager Bruce Bochy. Would we really be deprived of seeing Skenes vs. Judge? I started to get a little peeved at Bochy, even though he’s the managerial GOAT of this generation. Don’t do this to us, Boch.
Of course, I shouldn’t have worried so much. Judge’s Yankees teammate, Juan Soto, was coming to the plate.
I should note, of course, that Soto is a monster at the plate and this matchup would prove incredibly fun. Skenes flashed his stuff immediately with the sinker and Soto took perhaps the worst-looking swing we’d ever seen from him. It was a partial swing like he was confused by the action.
“I think it was a split, it’s a pretty good pitch,” Soto said afterward. “I watched it twice so I was definitely trying to get used to it.”
The next two pitches were balls and it was 2-1 and we were in business. Soto again swung through a slider and Skenes had him on the ropes. Then Soto finally got a piece of one and fouled off the next sinker. Perhaps Skenes and catcher William Contreras worried about letting Soto see the sinker too many times in a row after the foul ball, because the next pitch was a curve — rare for Skenes — before a 100 mph fastball missed for ball four.
“I was trying to take him deep, no lie,” Soto told reporters with a devilish smile.
And it was on. Judge vs. Skenes. I started to hear a bell ringing in my head to signal that this was the Main Event.
The matchup itself disappointed, as Judge grounded out on the first pitch. Darn. No prolonged battle that culminated with a home run or strikeout. A bit of a letdown, but we got to see the dream matchup. There was a nearly palpable buzz in the Texas crowd. This was as good as it gets for an All-Star Game.
“I got the chance to battle and watch [Soto] battle against one of the young studs in the NL right now, it was pretty cool,” Judge said.
Skenes faced four of the better hitters in Major League Baseball with a collectively very well-rounded set of skills and what happened was a tapestry of dominance. Sure, he walked Soto, but he also made Juan Freaking Soto look bad in addition to Kwan and Henderson. Do you know how hard that is to do?
“It was cool to face off against them back-to-back,” Skenes said on the Fox broadcast of battling the two Yankees stars. “They were tough. Soto was a tough at-bat and Judge, I kind of went after him and got him to roll over one.”
Let’s go back to Yelich on Monday:
“Not downplaying 100, but you see 100 a lot. There’s a lot of guys who throw 100, but he’s not up there just ripping 100. He’s pitching,” the Brewers slugger said at media day. “And when you have 100 in the tank, too, that’s when it’s a little different. He was changing speeds with us, [the sinker] was anywhere from 91 to 95-96 and his fastball is 100. He knows how to use his arsenal, it kind of seemed like he knew what he was doing, setting us up. He was pretty advanced.”
While Skenes is a fireballer, he isn’t just a fireballer. He’s a well-rounded pitcher. He got weak contact from Kwan, Henderson and Judge and barely broke a sweat. He still hasn’t allowed a hit in more than a week, since he worked seven no-hit innings last time out while striking out 11. He can strike you out, but he doesn’t need to every time. He’s a complete pitcher; the real deal.
Judge wouldn’t call it a win that he didn’t strike out against Skenes — “a win is putting some runs on the board,” he said. This was a win for Major League Baseball, though. The star power of Skenes was all on display for the world to see in Tuesday’s All-Star Game. Regardless of the result, MLB already won this one.
