Pirates call up top prospect Paul Skenes

In a season that has already seen MLB's #1 prospect Jackson Holliday be called up (and subsequently fail to rise to the challenge,) the Pirates just announced that they are calling up the #3 prospect in all of baseball, Paul Skenes.

The Pirates have had a bit of a wild ride this year. They currently sit at fourth in the National League Central, with only the Cardinals trailing them. They've also dropped 7 of their last 10 games.

The Pirates have been running a 4-man rotation for a few days now, meanwhile Skenes has been playing his butt off in Triple-A. He was only drafted last year, but rose from rookie ball to Double-A just last year. He started off this year in AAA, and in seven games has posted a mind-boggling 0.99 ERA. On April 14, starter Marco Gonzalez hit the injured list, putting the option to promote Skenes on the table. The Indianapolis Indians (the Pirates AAA affilitate) have certainly been conservative in how long they let Skenes pitch into games. I mentioned that he's pitched in 7 games, well thats only across 27 1/3 innings, meaning he's only pitching 3-4 frames per game. The right-hander's K/9 over that time in AAA this year is also an insane 15 strikeouts per 9 innings.

Something I didn't want to mention but feel like I should is that Pittsburgh recently demoted their 2021 first-round (and first overall,) pick Henry Davis on Friday to make room for Yasmani Grandal to be reinstated from the injured list. Davis only has a .162 batting average this year, although that is bumped to a .280 OBP thanks to his 11 walks. He has a .250 career average in AAA, although his defense certainly stands up for that. Another plus of him is that he can also play RF, as we saw last year and some this year.

Back to Skenes, however, he is set to make his Major League Debut this Saturday at home against the Cubs at 4:05 ET, that's going to be must-see-TV, so be excited for that. Skenes is no stranger to high-profile games, however, since your going to get a lot of those playing for LSU. He not only made it to the NCAA Baseball World Series in 2023, but he also won it with the Tigers.

So that's it for today's article, I also published a YouTube short about this, hopefully you can go check that out, I would really appreciate it!