Pirates Insider Podcast, Episode 42 (7/15 Paul Skenes' first half)

Paul Skenes has heard the questions about his velocity. Often, he laughs. He says he doesn't need it to pitch effectively. So, what did the Pirates ace think about his first half? And what sort of numbers are underneath the surface? Jason Mackey takes a deep dive here.

Transcript

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All right, good morning, everybody. This is the Pirates Insider Podcast. I am your host, Jason Mackey. One more episode from Philadelphia, and I saved this one because I think it's a very important storyline for the Pirates in the second half. It's something everybody's been talking about in the first half. It is involving one of the pirates all-stars and is probably a bit of a contentious topic. I've talked about it on the podcast before. Can you guess what it is? You should be able to know. It's Paul Skeens. Paul Skeens and Velocity and how seriously we should take any of this stuff. I had a chance to talk to Skeens during Media Day about a couple of these things. And what I was curious about, and Paul has always been very good about being honest about a narrative. He's one of those players, I've covered a lot of them over the years that, you know, maybe in a group setting, not as insightful, but you get them one-on-one, he's fantastic. And so got Paul alone for a little bit to talk about that sort of stuff. And what I wanted to know from Paul was how does he think about these velocity questions? Because when I think about him pitching, I don't think about this drop in velocity is what has caused some of the problems that he's encountered. And the drop in velocity, I know you can't see me on screen, but it's you know, to me belongs in air quotes. We're looking at 98.8 as a rookie in schemes this season is at 96.6 miles per hour. Uh personally, I think it's overblown. Uh I talked about that, I think it was prior to the start in Philadelphia, and then he goes down to 93, 94. Now that's concerning. That's concerned. That's a velocity drop that you can't sort of avoid. Um, we're going 98.8 to 96.6. I I can't get too worked up there. Remember, it's an average. A lot of his stuff, I know over the past two starts, it's been about 97.5, somewhere in that range. Uh, but anyway, what I wanted to know was how Skeens handles, how he thinks about all that stuff. Is it something that you know he's drilling deep into? And it's really not. It's really not. His answer, he said, I think it's funny when people ask about my velocity when I don't only when I don't have a good outing. Uh he said, in those outings, I didn't really get damaged on my four-seamer that much. So what that did was lead me to go through a bunch of numbers, and I love doing this. I love just digging into you know baseball reference and game logs and baseball savant and any sort of metric we can find. We use the term going under the hood. Um, and I'm sorry ahead of time, this episode's probably going to be dense with some numbers, but I will summarize it this way. I think the concern is overblown. I think if you look at his fastball specifically, it's very good. Um, it doesn't really matter about the drop in velocity. Yes, I mentioned 98.8 as a rookie, 96.6 this year. But if you want to look at some of the metrics behind it, and I've done this before, I think it's sort of worth doing this again is you know, and there's a whole lot more to this episode. I'm not just talking about his fastball velocity, but I do want to talk about kind of under the hood with Paul Skeen's performance in the first half and what to expect in the second half. But batting average against his follow his fastball as a rookie was 230. It's 195 this year. It's gotten better. Slugging percentage against his fastball as a rookie, 351 as a rookie, 352 this year. The run value, which is one of those advanced metrics on baseball savant, it was seven as a rookie, it's 11 this year, on pace to you know, be roughly around where it was last year, which was 20. Like the performance of the fastball itself hasn't changed. If you look at other underlying numbers, and this is, you know, this advances the conversation a little bit. This is beyond fastball velocity for schemes. This is sort of just taking stock of where he was at in the first half. And I asked Paul, how would you grade your first half? He said he'd give it a B. And he said he liked some stuff that he did, feels like he learned some lessons. He also could have been better. Not terrible. I think I've learned a lot, was the exact quote. And, you know, I think that's a pretty accurate summation. I'm certainly not of the mind that something is terribly wrong for schemes. Again, let's look at some expected numbers over the course of his career. Expected batting average as a rookie, 191. This year, 203. Not a lot of change. Expected slugging as a rookie, 302 this year, 320. Not a lot of change. Strikeout rate, 33% as a rookie, 30% this year. Walk rate, 6% as a rookie, 5.5 this year. It's actually better. Like it's basically the same thing. Um, there's differences in the ERA, and that's something that really stands out to me. I also think the ERA probably doesn't tell all of the story with schemes in the first half. I was going through some of his starts, and you know, even back to that Mets start, O'Neil Cruz makes two plays. Let's say he gets out of that game, five innings, two runs, that's a heck of a lot different than two-thirds of an inning in five runs. That's not going to solve all the ERA problems, but when you look at expected ERA versus actual ERA, uh, over his first two seasons, Skeens was 0.61 better than expected. This year he's 0.86 worse than expected. He's at 357. His expected ERA is 271. But that's why you look at that sort of stuff. An expected ERA, you know, it's based on pitch quality, pitch outcomes, um, quality of contact, that sort of thing. And it's all sort of baked in there. And again, it's not to make excuses, because later in this podcast and later in our conversation with Paul, we talked also about things to improve upon. And there are areas where he can get better. You can look at these numbers, and I I like to I like to base a lot of this stuff in numbers because it's it's really hard to argue with them. And if you're gonna say, look, these numbers have stayed the same, if one is out of whack, I'm also gonna that's that's fair. Um, but a lot of a lot of what he's doing, it is very much within um the realm of normal normalcy throughout his career. But um, as far as a few things that have changed, I think about skiing strike throwing. That's one area that I think needs to change in the second half. Zone percentage is a stat that I like to look at a decent amount. That's the number of pitches purely thrown in the strike zone. That's not really looking at you know, swing, chase, foul, that sort of deal, but he's a career low of 46.4%. I'd like to see that higher. Um, you can also look at actual strikes thrown. That has decreased over the last little while as well. He was 64, he's 64.8% this year, was 66.1 as a rookie. So, what does that tell me? That tells me Paul Skins needs to throw more strikes. He needs to attack more, he needs to be in the zone more, he needs to challenge hitters more. I think that's a fair criticism. I think I believe I've said on this podcast before too, if I'm gonna criticize Paul for anything, it's sometimes not being as efficient as he should be, and maybe pitching for strikeouts a little bit more than I'd like him to do. Uh, but uh I I also just I don't I don't see that as a hill to die on in this case. Another thing I looked at was quality of contact, um, and nothing is different. His average exit velocity, 87.8 as a rookie, 87.6, 87.9, very much within line. Hard hit percentage, which means the percentage of balls hit that have an exit velocity of 95 plus, it is 37.4%. That is below his career mark. Uh barrel rate, 6.1%, slightly above his career mark, 5.7, but I don't know, four hundredths of a percentage or four-tenths of a percentage, excuse me. I'm not sure. Not sure we're gonna really bank on that too much. Um, really, what this is to me is slight corrections in the second half. They don't have anything to do with velocity. They have everything to do with attacking, uh, throwing a few more strikes, getting some better defense behind him. Stick with the four-seamer. The four-seamer's been really good. I'd also like to see, and this is the last point I'll make here, I do want to see what Skeens did the two starts prior to the all-star break. I want to see that continue. And what I mean by that, he attacked more with his fastball these past two starts. 60% and 51% fastballs, his past two starts. That's a change from the season. That's a much more aggressive mindset. It's the Paul Schens of old. And I think there's some meat on the bone when it comes to his off-speed stuff. You know, I talked about the numbers in 24, 25, 26, what's out of whack? That's something that's out of whack. Uh, if you look at the performance of his off-speed stuff as a rookie, he was in the 100th percentile across Major League Baseball. That was because of the splinker. Nobody really touched it. That had a run value. I've cited that number before of 17. That's dropped to two. Um, his usage of the splinker has also gone way down, 28.4% as a rookie, 11.3% this year. His percentile in off-speed stuff, he's in the 20th percentile with his off-speed stuff. That needs to improve. And that's largely the splinker. That's a lot of times the changeup. He's thrown a lot of change ups. And if I'm gonna, you know, nitpick and and highlight anything that needs to change in the second half, it's that throwing strikes, using the splinker more, etc. But I don't think that Paul Skeens is doomed. I don't think it's all over. Um, I I never thought he was all all over. I know it got a little hairy there in Philadelphia, but I think this break will be good for him. And I think there's a lot of optimism in the second half. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. We'll be back with a mailbag edition here on the Pirates Insider podcast tomorrow. Make sure you like and subscribe and get all of that stuff. Enjoy doing these for you every day, and talk to you tomorrow.