A five-inning outing with five hits, two runs, and four strikeouts would be nothing for most pitchers. For Paul Skenes, it now feels like another small reminder that something is off.

On Tuesday night against the Marlins, the Pirates pulled him after just 65 pitches. He never touched 97 mph. His fastball sat at a career-low 95.7 mph and topped out at 96.5. At one point, Esteury Ruiz got a middle fastball and sent it into the seats. Griffin Conine nearly did the same before Bryan Reynolds saved a home run at the wall.

Skenes only gave up one earned run, and on paper, the line doesn’t look bad.

But the way he got there did.

This wasn’t a weird defensive night or one bad inning inflating the damage. It looked like a pitcher grinding through a start without his usual edge, and Pittsburgh decided five innings was enough.

“If I were the manager, I’d probably do it too,” Skenes said afterward.

That might have been the most revealing part of the night.

He says he’s healthy. The Pirates say the early exit wasn’t injury-related. And a dip in velocity in August isn’t exactly unheard of in baseball.

Still, the pattern is getting harder to ignore. Skenes now has a 3.88 ERA after finishing each of his first two MLB seasons under 2.00. His fastball velocity has steadily ticked down — from 98.8 mph as a rookie to 98.2 last year to 96.8 this season. He hasn’t hit 98 in six straight starts, and Tuesday came at the end of a rough stretch where he’s posted a 5.79 ERA over his last nine outings.

None of that means he’s suddenly a different pitcher.

But it does mean this isn’t just about waiting for one dominant start to reset everything anymore.

The Fastball Isn’t The Same

Skenes has never been just a “throw it as hard as you can and hope” kind of pitcher, even if the radar gun makes it feel that way sometimes. The 100 mph headlines kind of flatten the story. What actually made him ridiculous right away was how complete he was.

He could locate. He could change speeds. He could mess with shapes. The splitter, sinker, sweeper, slider, changeup — it’s all in there, and it all worked together. The velocity just made everything play up. It wasn’t the whole identity, just the loudest part of it.

That’s why losing almost two mph now is so alarming.

The fastball itself isn’t suddenly getting crushed. Hitters are still only putting up a .282 wOBA against it this year, basically the same as last season, and it’s still his most valuable pitch by run value. Even at 97, Skenes is more than capable of getting big-league hitters out. A lot of pitchers would take that “problem” in a heartbeat.

But the issue is what happens around it when the fastball isn’t quite as intimidating.

Skenes’ heater was never about elite ride or crazy movement. It worked because it got on hitters faster than almost anyone else’s and came out of a tough, unusual look. When that edge shrinks even a little, hitters get more time. They can stay on the fastball without being completely lost on everything else.

And that ripple effect is showing up everywhere.

The sinker, which used to be a pretty reliable ground-ball pitch, has turned into something hitters are lifting and driving. The whiff rate is down to 8.9%, and opponents are slugging .500 off it. He’s actually cut back on using it because he’s had trouble keeping it down, but when you take away one of your harder arm-side options, it makes everything else a little easier to pick up.

The changeup has taken a step back too. Hitters are just on it more often now — better timing, better contact. It went from being worth nine runs last year to costing him five this season. The splitter isn’t missing bats like it used to, and even the breaking stuff is getting squared up a little more often.

There are some mechanical things mixed in too. His arm angle has crept up from 23 degrees to 26, which changes how everything comes out of his hand. None of this is catastrophic on its own. Three degrees of arm angle doesn’t break a pitcher. A little less movement doesn’t turn a Cy Young guy into something else entirely.

But together, it starts to explain some of the struggles. Skenes has said before that velocity doesn’t really matter if you don’t have it when you need it. That made sense in the context of pacing himself over a long season. The flip side is that he also hasn’t really shown that extra gear in big moments this year.

Before the game, Don Kelly even acknowledged that Skenes knows the velo is down and might be pressing a bit to find it again.

You can’t just go and get it.

His ERA Is Telling An Incomplete Story

It would be easy to look at Skenes’ 3.88 ERA, compare it to last year’s 1.97, and just say, “yeah, something’s wrong.”

But it’s not that simple.

Skenes has still struck out 166 hitters in 134 2/3 innings. Only six pitchers in baseball have more. His strikeout rate is still sitting at 30%, which is elite no matter how you slice it, and his 6.7% walk rate is still really solid. The gap between those two numbers alone tells you he’s not just out there getting shelled.

Even the underlying metrics back that up. His 3.11 FIP and 3.13 expected ERA both say he’s been better than what the surface stats show. He’s already at 3.7 fWAR, which puts him right near the top tier of MLB pitchers again.

So no, this isn’t a guy who suddenly forgot how to pitch. It’s not even a “he’s average now” situation. It’s more like we’re comparing him to a version of himself that was almost unfair.

Last year, Skenes put up a 1.97 ERA and a 0.95 WHIP. He won the National League Cy Young unanimously. And he did it in a way that made it look kind of routine, which is honestly the scariest part. He also became the first pitcher 23 or younger since Dwight Gooden to post back-to-back sub-2.00 ERA seasons.

That kind of thing just doesn’t stick forever. It never really does. At some point, there’s always some regression. A few more balls leave the yard. A few more grounders sneak through. That’s just baseball.

The problem is Pittsburgh has made that regression feel a lot worse than it should.

Last year, the Pirates were actually a really good defensive team, finishing seventh in Outs Above Average at +18. This year? They’ve dropped all the way to -13, which is a pretty ugly swing and puts them near the bottom third of the league. Their team BABIP has jumped from .281 to .298, and you can feel it watching them behind Skenes.

There have been some rough moments too. Oneil Cruz losing a ball in the sun on Opening Day. Nick Gonzales air-mailing a throw home while trying to turn a double play. And overall, Pittsburgh has been at -7 Fielding Run Value behind Skenes this year, which is one of the worst in baseball.

Those kinds of plays absolutely show up in a pitcher’s ERA. They just don’t always tell you much about the pitcher himself.

Even Tuesday’s start had one of those moments, with an unearned run scoring after a throwing error. Skenes could’ve given up one run in five innings and still taken a loss because the Pirates didn’t score at all.

So yeah, defense and timing explain part of the gap between his ERA and everything else. But they don’t explain everything.

He’s giving up more hard contact in the air. His ground-ball rate has dropped from 51.1% as a rookie to around 40% this year. His average launch angle allowed has jumped from 8.4 degrees to 15.7, and his barrel rate has gone from 5.2% to 7.6%.

That’s the part that actually matters.

Hitters aren’t necessarily squaring him up more often overall — his hard-hit rate is pretty similar to last year. But they are getting the ball in the air more, and when you do that, mistakes don’t get forgiven the same way. Fly balls turn into doubles and homers a lot faster than grounders ever will.

Pittsburgh Has To Find Out What This Is

The most reasonable explanation here might just be fatigue — even if nobody in Pittsburgh wants to say it out loud.

Skenes threw 187 2/3 innings last season, which is a big jump from his rookie year. Then he didn’t really get a break. He ramped up early for the World Baseball Classic, threw 8 1/3 high-intensity innings for Team USA, and basically rolled straight from that into another full MLB season.

And yeah, the WBC workload itself wasn’t crazy in terms of volume. But it’s more about timing than anything else. He had to get into “game mode” way earlier than most pitchers and then immediately pivot into a full grind of a season with the Pirates.

Now it’s August. Pittsburgh is 58-64, the playoffs are slipping away, and Skenes is already at 134 2/3 innings this year. And as that number has climbed, the fastball has slowly ticked down with it.

Does that prove fatigue is the reason? No. Not even close. But it’s also not something the Pirates can just ignore anymore.

He’s only in the strike zone about 46% of the time now, down from 51% in each of his first two seasons. The command is still good — it’s not like he’s lost control — but he’s clearly pitching a little more carefully. Less “here it is, try to hit it,” more “let me make sure this is perfect first.” And that usually leads to longer at-bats, deeper counts, and more stress on every inning.

He wanted to be more efficient this year. Instead, he’s gone from averaging 5.86 innings per start last season to 5.39 this year.

That’s part of why the Miami start stood out. It wasn’t a meltdown. He wasn’t getting shelled. He just looked… a little less sharp, a little less explosive.

Skenes is still healthy, at least according to everyone involved. The underlying numbers still say he’s pitching like an ace. The strikeout and walk rates are still elite. He can clearly still get people out without needing 100 mph to do it.

But the eye test is also real. Both things can be true at the same time.

If it is fatigue, then yeah — maybe a real reset makes sense, especially if the Pirates keep sliding out of contention.

But if this is just who he is right now, then the adjustment is different. He’s going to have to learn how to dominate without just overpowering everyone. That means living in the zone more, getting the sinker back to where it needs to be, and finding a secondary pitch that actually forces hitters to guess again.

The good news is he’s talented enough to do all of that. The not-so-great news is that no one thought he would have to this soon.

All stats courtesy of MLB.com.

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