By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
The Pittsburgh Pirates were eliminated from the Major League Baseball Playoffs entering the last week of the regular season last week. That is 11 straight seasons for the franchise and third straight with franchise pitcher Paul Skenes – the No. 1 pick of the MLB Draft in 2023 from LSU.
The Pirates were better in 2026 than in Skenes’ first two seasons as Pittsburgh actually finished above .500 at 82-80 and in third place in the National League Central behind Milwaukee, which had the best regular season record in baseball at 103-59 and the Chicago Cubs at 89-73. Pittsburgh’s record would have been good enough to win the American League West, which Houston took at 81-81 to become the first team in MLB history to win a division with a non-winning record in a non-shortened season. The Texas Rangers were second at 80-82.
In 2025, the Pirates finished 71-91, and they were 76-86 in 2024.
When Skenes won National League Rookie of the Year in 2024 at 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA and started the first of two straight All-Star games, Pittsburgh averaged 1.35 runs a game with Skenes on the mound. In 2025 when Skenes took the National League Cy Young with a 10-10 mark and 1.96 ERA, he got 3.4 runs a game.
This season, Pittsburgh’s offense improved to 4.73 runs a game and 4.74 for Skenes, but he didn’t keep up his end. His ERA ballooned, for him, to 3.82 as he finished 10-11 on the season.
“Their ace’s struggles offered a reminder of one reason why a ticket won’t be punched,” Colin Beazley of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote as the season neared the end.
The main reason for Skenes’ skid has been, according to most accounts, his drop in velocity from 98.8 as a rookie to 98.2 in 2025 and to 96.8 this season.
“It’s been frustrating,” Skenes told FOX Sports late in the season. “But the thing I’ve kind of realized is that I do everything I can. There’s an answer there somewhere. The velo is down. We see all the numbers. We can try to address it. We can do all that. To some extent, it’s kind of just how it is.”
Once the season ended last week, though, Skenes, 24, got a little more detailed in an exclusive interview with the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette and pointed to a variable. He pitched shortly before the season for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic last March, going 2-0 with a 1.08 ERA in eight and a third innings. That’s not a lot, and Skenes admitted to having some mechanical issues throughout the season. But he said he believes the pre-season WBC pitching may have triggered his issues in 2026 after no such pitching before his first two seasons.
“There are a lot of other factors, so I don’t want to put everything on the WBC,” Skenes told the Post-Gazette in an extensive interview published this past Monday. “But I feel like that was kind of the root of it a little bit. Usually, that time of year (in March at spring training), you’re kind of ramping up, and it’s a little bit slow. You can kind of get onto the slope and find your body. You’re topping at 97, and then the next you’re 98, 99. And that’s wasn’t the case this year. Looking back, I don’t think that (pitching in the WBC) really helped.”
Skenes’ average fastball velocity in the 2026 season was 96.8 mph, down from 98.1 in 2025 and 98.8 in 2024. His fastball dropped to a career “slow” 95.7 mph this past August in a game against Miami and averaged 96.1 in his last start on Sept. 25 against Kansas City.
His velocity was up and down through much of the season as was his consistency. He would have a poor outing, then a good one. He had three consecutive quality starts in mid-June. But from June 26 through August 5, he had a 6.26 ERA in eight starts with an uncharacteristic 3.9 walks per nine innings when his career average for walks was 2.2 per nine.
But even when he was pitching well, such as a 1.09 ERA over eight starts last April and May, he said something wasn’t right.
“Even then, I didn’t feel like I had my delivery,” Skenes told the Post-Gazette. “It’s just weird. It’s easier to kind of put your finger on it after the fact than it is in the moment.”
Skenes hopes to enter 2027 with no baggage.
“It definitely affected the year,” he said of pitching in the WBC. “It definitely didn’t make things easier.”
And sometimes little things make a difference.
“Everything is just having awareness of your hand at release,” Skenes told FOX shortly before the season ended. “It’s amazing how small things can be up the chain to throw that off. But looking at my assessments, nothing crazy has happened. What has happened this year, probably for that stretch in June through the beginning of August, was the velocity went down.”
That will obviously be what Skenes and the Pirates focus on before the 2027 season, which will be his first under the arbitration window. His contract runs out in the 2029 season.
“We’ll try to address it,” he said. “But you also have to understand what’s in your control and what’s not in your control. That was kind of not in my control. The velo goes up and down sometimes. Nothing has really explained my velocity drop. So, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”
That may be because of a conversation Skenes had with Detroit Tiger Justin Verlander late in the season. Verlander, a 10-time All-Star, five-time strikeout leader and three-time Cy Young winner who was the 2006 rookie of the year, announced during the 2026 season that ’26 would be his last at age 43.
Verlander told Skenes that his velocity mysteriously dropped in his third full season at Detroit in 2008 as Skenes did in his third year in 2026.
“He was like, ‘My third year, I just lost my velo. I was completely healthy. It kind of just went away, and then it came back,’” Skenes said.
The Baseball Savant velocity tracker confirmed Verlander dropped to 94.3 in his third season in 2008, then rose to 96.3 in 2009 and remained up through most of his career.
“I was like, ‘You know what? That’s kind of good to hear,’” Skenes said he told Verlander. “It’s not just me.”
And it likely was, partly, the WBC action.
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