Paul Skenes Makes Wild Claim About How Many Pitches He's 'Conditioned' to Throw

Skenes said he thinks he could throw 150 pitches if needed.

Skenes had an excellent outing on Friday night / Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

Paul Skenes put forth a tremendous effort on Friday night for the Pittsburgh Pirates, blanking the Los Angeles Dodgers through six and a third innings to earn his third win of the season. Skenes brought his best stuff to the mound to take on the defending World Series champs and spoke extensively about how much fun he had battling the best baseball players in the world, including a nasty strikeout of Shohei Ohtani.

Skenes also discussed returning for the seventh inning after he hit the 100-pitch mark in the sixth. He admitted he was a "bit surprised" manager Derek Shelton brought him back out onto the mound, but stated he could have thrown a lot more pitches if needed. Like, a lot more.

"I was a little bit surprised, but I was fired up," Skenes said to reporters, per ESPN's Alden Gonzalez. "I know this is never going to happen, but I really do feel like I'm built and conditioned to throw 140, 150 [pitches]. I know that happens in college; it doesn't happen in the big leagues anymore. I'm not going to say no when they ask me to face another hitter, to go back out there for another inning. And it's weird -- a lot of the times I feel better in the sixth or seventh than I do in the first. That was the case tonight."

It's a wild claim, but believable. As Skenes pointed out there's no shot he ever gets anywhere close to that mark; out of caution to avoid potential injury, teams rarely allow pitchers to get very far past 100 pitches in one start nowadays. But Skenes is a man built to pitch for a living. If he were able to just go without a thought given to the impact on his body, would it really be shocking to see him hit 150 pitches thrown?

Well, yes, it would. Because the modern baseball world has never seen that. But if anyone could do it, Skenes could.

---

More MLB on Sports Illustrated

feed