Paul Skenes is arguably the best pitcher on the planet. The reigning NL Cy Young Award winner is so good that, at times, his stuff makes him even look extraterrestrial.
Skenes may be an alien, but he lost to a robot on Wednesday during his spring training debut.
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During the first inning of a 3-1 defeat to the Atlanta Braves, the Pittsburgh Pirates ace missed the strike zone by one-tenth of an inch with a 1-1 curveball that was initially called a strike by home-plate umpire Chris Segal.
Braves first baseman Matt Olson, known for his disciplined eye, tapped his head, triggering MLB’s new Automatic Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System.
An ABS graphic then showed that Skenes’ pitch was actually a ball but only by the narrowest of measurements. It was just outside, and it was one of four called strikes that Skene threw that were then overturned by the machine, which uses Hawk-Eye technology to monitor the exact location of each pitch, relative to a batter’s strike zone.
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Olson’s take led to a two-out walk, extending what became a 31-pitch inning.
Although Skenes didn’t allow a run in the frame, he appeared to lose the groove he started the day on, notably issuing another base on balls after Olson’s.
“When the season gets rolling, that’s probably not the pitch that you’re going to be challenging, but you’ve got to feel it out a bit,” Olson said, per MLB.com. “I figured, whatever. It was a backdoor sweeper that I felt kind of held up a little bit. I just said, ‘Screw it, let’s rip it and see what happens.'”
Skenes’ second walk came against Jurickson Profar, who challenged a fastball and won to turn an 0-1 count into an advantageous 1-0 situation.
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The next batter, Austin Riley, called for a replay after he was caught looking on a 99 mph four-seamer. Turns out that was well above the zone, but Skenes quickly recalibrated his placement and fired another laser just below the previous one. That time, he got Riley swinging to end the inning.
Skenes saw another strike flip to a ball in the second inning and finished with four walks and one earned run allowed in just 2 1/3 innings of action. He did, however, punch out four batters.
That kind of outing wasn’t necessarily the ramp-up to his World Baseball Classic debut that he was looking for — Skenes, after all, is coming off a terrific 2025 campaign, in which the 23-year-old posted an MLB-best 1.97 ERA.
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At the moment, Skenes isn’t sweating the razor-thin margins ABS exposes.
“Ask me again in June,” he said, according to MLB.com. “Today, that’s how it is. I’ve just got to adjust. … I think it will even out over the course of the season, but ask me in June.”
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