Pirates' Paul Skenes Hoping To Make Opening Day Start
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Who ends up taking the ball on Opening Day feels like a foregone conclusion for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Still, the Pirates haven't made an official decision yet on who will toe the slab when they face the Miami Marlins on March 27. One would be led to believe that Paul Skenes is the one to take the ball against Miami, and if that's the decision the Pirates arrive at, that moment would be one that the right-handed pitcher cherishes as he begins his second season and first full year in the big leagues.
"That would be an honor," Skenes said on Saturday. "That'd be really cool. Gotta pitch well, though."
Pirates manager Derek Shelton spoke about the potential decision to start Skenes on Opening Day on Chris Rose's podcast, The Chris Rose Rotation, but remained relatively mum on the matter. The most Shelton gave to Rose's prying on the decision was that Skenes would start one of the four games in Miami to begin the season.
"I am not going to speculate," Shelton said. "I'm the last person, probably because of how superstitious I am of talking about that until we get through spring training. I do not want to say, 'Hey, we're going to do this, this and this.' Because then all of a sudden we hit a hiccup in the road with not just Paul, but anybody, and then it's like, 'Well, you publicly said that.' Well, let's wait until we get into Spring Training [and] we know where we're at in terms of everybody and then we work from there."
Paul Skenes and the @Pirates would love a dominant 2025 campaign 😤 pic.twitter.com/pNCrGLVNnG
— MLB (@MLB) February 14, 2025
Skenes' rookie season was more than enough to warrant him getting the Opening Day nod, as he won the 2024 National League Rookie of the Year and finished third in the Cy Young vote. Skenes was the fifth pitcher in MLB history to win the Rookie of the Year and finish in the top three for the Cy Young and the first since Jose Fernandez in 2013. He was also the first rookie pitcher to start an All-Star Game since Hideo Nomo of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995.
Skenes went 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA in 23 starts while setting a Pirates franchise record for a rookie with 170 strikeouts over 133 innings. He was also the first pitcher in MLB history to have an ERA below 2.20 and over 150 strikeouts in their first 21 games and the second pitcher since 1913 to have an ERA below 2.00 through their first 22 appearances.
