A pair of inscriptions, stitched white in cursive, dot the outside of the black and yellow-trimmed Nike glove that Paul Skenes used for all 32 of his starts this season.
On the mitt’s thumb, a single four-letter word: Flow.
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It serves as a reminder, for both hitter and pitcher, of just how impenetrable the Pirates hurler can seem when he sinks into a rhythm.
The second batch of lettering, threaded atop the glove’s pinky finger, is a Bible verse: 2 Timothy 1:7. There are various phrasings of the passage referenced on his leather, but the King James Bible reads: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
Appropriate, then, that nothing about Skenes the Ballplayer or his big league performance to date, can be described as afraid.
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The gargantuan hurler is the personification of calm confidence. There is not a timid bone in his body. Skenes radiates controlled aggression on the diamond and serenity outside the lines. He is what happens when God-given talent meets self-discipline and work ethic.
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Those traits — and, of course, his canyon-deep arsenal of dastardly pitches — propelled Skenes to a sophomore season for the history books. Across 32 starts, the 23-year-old shouldered 187 2/3 innings with a 1.97 ERA that led all qualified starters. Skenes punched out 216 hitters (tied for second in the National League) while walking just 42. That 23.7 percent strikeout-to-walk ratio, per FanGraphs, topped the NL leaderboard by over 2 percentage points.
On Wednesday, Skenes was rewarded for his six months of brilliance. He is officially the 2025 NL Cy Young.
After finishing third in Cy Young a year ago during his Rookie of the Year campaign, Skenes left absolutely no doubt this time around. The voting for the first Cy Young of his career was, unsurprisingly, unanimous. All thirty ballots ranked Skenes first. Thirty more ballots would have done the same. In a different era, Skenes’ 10-10 record would have raised eyebrows and given some pause. Thankfully though, times have changed.
It is a fitting honor for a pitcher who has begun his career at a historic pace. Through 55 career starts, Skenes has a sparkling 1.96 ERA. That is, since integration, the single-lowest ERA for a starter’s first 55 big league outings. In other words, no pitcher in the modern era has ever been this good this quickly.
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A glance at the names behind Skenes on that list, however, offers a lesson in restraint. For every Orel Hershiser there are three Matt Harveys, Mark Priors and Alek Manoahs. For every Seaver a few Fidryches. Pitching is a volatile line of work. Given the propensity and severity of injuries in the modern game, that has never been more true. For Skenes, the path from now to Cooperstown is rife with landmines, pitfalls and the like. Baseball immortality is earned with longevity, something only the passage of time can provide.
But Skenes is as prepared and as capable as anybody in the sport to spend the next decade flummoxing and frustrating the best hitters on Earth. Chances are, if he’s healthy, he’ll be effective. The only compelling question that remains, in the short term, is whether Skenes will ever grace October as a Pirate.
Félix Hernández, another early-arriving, immediately-overpowering force, threw 2,729 2/3 innings for the Seattle Mariners. Zero of those came in the postseason. At this point, Skenes’ Pirates feel similarly mired in a whirlpool of woe. In Skenes, Pittsburgh lucked into a plug-and-play lottery ticket and proceeded to cobble together one of the most hapless offenses in recent memory. There are interesting arms on the farm and in the bigs that afford a glimmer of hope, but the Pirates, as currently constructed, aren’t very good.
That’s a shame, but it’s not something that will dissuade or sidetrack Skenes. He is as locked-in a ballplayer as there is in today’s game. Last winter, in the afterglow of his rise to fame, Skenes and his girlfriend, former LSU gymnast and social media influencer Livvy Dunne, were whisked about the country on a whirlwind media tour. They jetted about to LSU football games, sat down for magazine cover photoshoots and even showed up on the Super Bowl red carpet.
Amid it all, Skenes remained laser-focused on his routine. He wouldn’t agree to a media appearance unless he could ensure a convenient, sufficient facility at which to train.
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“Yeah, I mean, I’m kind of a prick to the people that are around me in terms of training,” Skenes admitted to Yahoo Sports in a sit-down interview back in spring training.
In that conversation, Skenes was honest and self-deprecating about his stature in the sport. He understood that despite his phenomenal rookie season, nothing was given, nothing was destined.
“I’ve been in the show for four and a half months,” Skenes pointed out in his unmistakable monotone drawl. “If people want to say that I’m better than whoever, they’re making the comps on TV, whatever they are, they want to do that, fine, but that comes from pitching well.
“They can say what they want, but I haven’t done anything in this game.”
That statement, at the very least, is no longer true.