Paul Skenes
"Before the Pittsburgh Pirates came calling, Paul Skenes had already chosen one path for his life—and then chose again."
Paul Skenes is a right-handed pitcher from Fullerton, California who arrived in Pittsburgh as the first overall pick of the 2023 MLB Draft after a road most top prospects never travel: a year at the United States Air Force Academy, a transfer to LSU, a College World Series championship, and one of the most celebrated rookie seasons in recent National League history. He throws harder than almost anyone. He also got there differently than almost anyone.
Before enrolling at LSU, Skenes attended the United States Air Force Academy—not as a part-time ROTC participant, but as a full cadet on the path to becoming a commissioned military officer. In the American system, this carries genuine obligation: graduates serve a minimum of five years in the armed forces. Skenes left before commissioning, but the choice to be there at all—when elite college baseball programs were already recruiting him—says something about who he was at eighteen that his fastball velocity alone cannot explain.
When Skenes debuted at PNC Park on May 11, 2024, Pittsburgh—a city whose baseball team had finished above .500 only twice in the previous decade—experienced something that doesn't translate cleanly into highlight reels: the specific, almost disorienting feeling of genuine hope arriving in a place trained to be careful about hope. That first start wasn't just a good outing. For longtime Pirates fans, it felt like a claim being made on the future of a franchise long defined by the talent it develops and then cannot afford to keep.
Colorado Springs, Then Baton Rouge
The United States Air Force Academy sits at roughly 7,250 feet in Colorado Springs—an institution that trains officers, not major leaguers, and whose alumni lists run to generals, test pilots, and astronauts rather than All-Stars. Skenes enrolled there out of high school, a choice that separated him from the standard top-prospect pipeline of travel-ball showcases and power-conference commitments. He did not finish; he transferred to Louisiana State University, where head coach Jay Johnson had built one of the premier programs in the country. What Skenes carried from Colorado Springs—what that detour suggested about how he was already approaching consequential decisions—is harder to quantify than a spin rate, but it surfaces in every serious account of how he prepares and how he competes.
LSU and the 2023 College World Series
At LSU, Skenes became the most discussed pitching prospect in college baseball with a velocity profile and secondary arsenal that drew comparisons analysts are ordinarily reluctant to make about collegiate players. In June 2023, he helped lead LSU to the College World Series championship in Omaha—a win that completed a remarkable circuit: elite recruit, service academy, SEC transfer, national champion. Weeks later, the Pittsburgh Pirates selected him first overall in the 2023 MLB Draft. The arc was almost implausible in its neatness, which is perhaps why it drew so much attention from people who usually distrust neat arcs.
For readers outside the United States: the five federal service academies—West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, and the Merchant Marine Academy—are among the most selective universities in the country. Tuition is covered by the federal government; in exchange, graduates commit to active military service. Admission is competitive in the way that elite research universities are competitive, and attendance is not symbolic. When Skenes enrolled at the Air Force Academy, he was not simply playing baseball at a military-affiliated school. He was, at least temporarily, choosing a life that places virtually no first-overall MLB Draft picks ever consider.
The Rookie Season
Skenes made his major league debut on May 11, 2024, roughly ten months after being drafted—a timeline that reflected both the Pirates' urgency and his own preparation. What followed was a debut campaign that prompted comparisons, carefully and with the standard caveats, to some of the most talked-about rookie starting-pitcher seasons in recent National League memory. He was selected to the All-Star Game and, by season's end, had won NL Rookie of the Year. At 22, he was no longer being discussed as a prospect. He had become a present-tense argument.
The Pitch That Gets Named
Skenes' fastball is the obvious point of entry, but his grip on opposing lineups owes much to what analysts and broadcasters came to call the 'Splinker'—a hybrid of a splitter and a sinker that batters described as resistant to categorization. In an era when hitters are trained on spin rates, movement profiles, and launch angles, a pitch that defies clean classification carries unusual value. Getting a pitch named in modern baseball is its own form of cultural arrival: it means something strange enough has happened that language had to catch up.
A Small City Watching Carefully
Pittsburgh has a complicated relationship with baseball celebrity. The Pirates have functioned, for much of the past three decades, as a franchise that grows talent it eventually cannot retain—a structural reality their fans understand with a clarity born of repetition. Skenes arrived in a city that has learned to hold its enthusiasm at a certain distance, but also in a city that recognizes, with the eye of long experience, what it means to have something genuinely rare in the building. Whether the relationship between Skenes and Pittsburgh extends past his arbitration years will say as much about the current economics of the sport as about the player himself. For now, the city is watching—carefully, and with something that looks a great deal like investment.
The Pittsburgh Pirates carry one of the richest legacies in the National League—Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, the 'We Are Family' 1979 World Series champions—alongside one of the more difficult modern economic realities in the sport. In the current structure of Major League Baseball, where large-market franchises can sustain payrolls many times greater than smaller ones, teams like the Pirates have often found themselves developing talent for others to deploy. Skenes' arrival doesn't change that structure. But it changes, at least temporarily, how a city shaped by that structure feels about watching baseball.
Books that add context to this player's story.
"The history and culture of America's federal service academies and the obligations they create" on Amazon "The development of elite pitching in the modern SEC and college baseball landscape" on Amazon "Small-market franchises, revenue disparity, and the economics of Major League Baseball" on AmazonThis profile was written by AI (Claude Sonnet) using publicly available sources. Interpretations and cultural notes are AI-generated and may not reflect the views of the player, their team, or MLB. This page contains affiliate links.