Paul Skenes Is Having a Start to His Career That Baseball Has Literally Never Seen

Skenes threw six scoreless innings and picked up the win Monday night.

Paul Skenes threw six scoreless innings against the Detroit Tigers Monday. / Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

Paul Skenes is dominant. That's nothing new, but after his latest gem of a start, he reached numbers that haven't been seen since the dead-ball era.

In his start against the 60-win Detroit Tigers Monday, Skenes threw six scoreless innings with six strikeouts, surrendering just three hits and one walk. It was only the 44th start of his career and he became the only player since 1901 with 300 or more strikeouts and a sub-2.00 ERA in that many games, as surfaced by Greg Harvey of OptaSTATS.

Players since 1901 to have 300+ strikeouts and a sub-2.00 ERA through 44 career MLB games:

Paul Skenes

That’s it. pic.twitter.com/p8bR63eI4l

— Greg Harvey (@BetweenTheNums) July 22, 2025

Skenes picked up the win Monday, as the Pirates shut out the Tigers 3-0. His record on the year is 5-8 as his team has often struggled to provide the run support to capitalize on the dominant outings. His ERA on the season dropped to 1.91, which leads baseball by a landslide.

Skenes was named the National League's Rookie of the Year after his first season, where he went 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA. He recently started the All-Star Game for the NL squad for the second year in a row.

He threw his 300th career strikeout in his prior start on July 11 against the Minnesota Twins, where he became one of just 17 MLB pitchers to record at least 300 strikeouts in 43 career starts.

---

More MLB on Sports Illustrated

feed