Paul Skenes no-hits Cubs for 6 innings in his 2nd MLB start

When the Chicago Cubs faced Paul Skenes in his first major league start last Saturday, they didn’t let him get through it cleanly.

Though he flashed the electric stuff and elite velocity that’s made him MLB’s No. 2 prospect (per MLB Pipeline), the Cubs tagged him for three earned runs on six hits and two walks. They made him throw 84 pitches and forced him from the game before recording an out in the fifth inning.

Friday morning, heading into a second matchup with Skenes in less than a week, Cubs manager Craig Counsell reflected on his team’s first meeting with the Pittsburgh Pirates’ rookie.

“I think every pitcher is going to find they have to be better,” Counsell said. “There’s going to be a little less swing-and-miss, there’s going to be a little less chase, and that’s what we have to make him do. We have to chase less, make him be in the zone more, make him make the next pitch, hit a foul ball [and] make the next pitch, keep making him make the next pitch.

“That’s when the mistakes happen. That’s when the balls happen. And I think we did a pretty good job of that. He’s going to create swing-and-miss, there’s no question about it. I think we made him make the next pitch, and that piles up the pitches.”

It’s still too early in the 21-year-old’s career to try and predict how his major league career will pan out.

But if more often than not, his future outings go similar to how it went Friday afternoon at Wrigley Field for the Pirates’ top prospect, a successful career seems to be on its way. Skenes, in his second big league start, was nothing but dominant. He went six innings without allowing a single hit. In fact, the Cubs’ only baserunner against him came on a fifth-inning walk by Michael Busch.

But the most eye-opening part of his day on the mound was how he continued to miss bats. Each of the first seven hitters Skenes faced struck out, five swinging and two looking.

He ultimately ended up with 11 total punchouts, and on the last one against Mike Tauchman to end the bottom of the sixth, Skenes got him on a 100-mph four-seamer — on his 100th pitch of the game. He ended up with his first big league ‘W’ as the Pirates beat the Cubs, 9-3.

While the speed of his fastball — he hit 100-plus mph 12 times — helped produce 12 whiffs (44.4 percent whiff rate) and seven called strikes and finished off eight of his 11 strikeouts, Skenes’ hybrid splitter-sinker (or “splinker”) was plenty effective, too.

Paired with the four-seamer — the two combined for 74 of his 100 pitches — the splinker produced five whiffs on 13 swings and an additional five called strikes.

“I thought, today, he stuck with basically the two pitches, the fastball and the sinker-split, whatever you want to call it,” Counsell said. “The split was really good, and they were competitive every single time, really. There’s enough velocity difference on those two pitches that it makes it really difficult.”

Postgame, Cubs hitters noted how well those two pitches played off each other, keeping them off balance.

“I thought the fastball command was pretty good today,” Tauchman said, “and then he was able to tunnel that splitter-sinker — or whatever he wants to call it — that pitch off of it, but throw those really, really competitively. When you’re dealing with somebody with that kind of velocity and they have command and they’re making you make split-second decisions, you know he did a good job.”

“I think the [splinker] definitely plays off that fastball well when he’s locating down,” said Pete Crow-Armstrong, who got his first look at Skenes on Friday and was one of two Cubs hitters he didn’t strike out. “Whenever someone’s locating, it’s always that much tougher to hit somebody. With his skill set and repertoire, that’s going to be hard to hit him when he’s on his A-game.”

But again, it’s still very early in Skenes’ career.

The more data teams get on him as he pitches at this level, the better they can plan for him. It’s hard when he has that kind of arsenal, of course, but considering he’s with an in-division opponent, the Cubs will likely see him plenty in the future — and they have to be confident they can break through when they do.

“It’s not impossible,” Crow-Armstrong said. “You saw what we did the first time, but it’s baseball. He got to make both his first two starts against us, and just as we got to create a different gameplan and alter our gameplan, he got to do that to his. So I mean, with all due respect, it’s baseball. I think everybody’s going to get hit around some point.

“But again, it’s the first two times he’s thrown to us, but it’s the first two times he’s thrown in his career. And he’s done well for himself, but nothing’s impossible.”

For now, the Cubs will have to just tip their caps to the guy they couldn’t figure out Friday.

“Credit to him today,” Tauchman said. “Obviously, he pitched really well.”

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