In a season that defied expectations and rewrote record books, Paul Skenes, the right-handed pitching sensation for the Pittsburgh Pirates, has etched his name in Major League Baseball history with an awe-inspiring performance.
Paul Skenes capped his sophomore season with the Pittsburgh Pirates by posting a 1.97 ERA — the lowest mark by a qualified starter in the National League since Jacob deGrom’s 1.08 in 2018 — and in doing so, carved out a place in MLB history that few pitchers of any generation can claim.
The Phenom’s Unparalleled Dominance
Skenes finished the season having allowed just 136 hits and 41 earned runs across 185.2 innings, striking out 216 batters along the way.
His 1.97 ERA made him the first qualified pitcher to finish a full season below 2.00 since Justin Verlander posted a 1.75 mark in 2022. When asked about the milestone, Skenes deflected with characteristic bluntness.
“I’m actually worse than I was last year,” he told reporters, per the Associated Press. “It was 1.96 last year. I’m 1.97 this year. Just got to be better. No, it’s cool. I don’t come into the year with any numerical goals.”
That kind of self-assessment from a pitcher who just delivered one of the most dominant two-year stretches in recent memory says everything about his competitive makeup.
Teammates Sing His Praises
Context makes Skenes’ achievement even more striking. Over the past decade — excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020 season — only six qualified starters have finished a full campaign with an ERA under 2.00. Skenes has now done it twice.
Beyond the league-wide rarity, his 1.97 ERA also stands as a franchise record for the Pirates in the live-ball era, a stretch that covers more than 50 qualified Pittsburgh starters going back decades. No Pirates pitcher had ever reached that threshold in a full season.
Skenes didn’t just clear the bar — he reset it entirely for an organization that has produced its share of pitching talent over the years.
The Road to Cy Young Glory?
Inside the Pirates clubhouse, the reaction bordered on reverence. First baseman Spencer Horwitz, who batted .262 with 9 home runs and 47 RBIs on the season, didn’t mince words: ”
He’s the best in the world. I’ve said that time and time again, and he doesn’t disappoint.” Manager Don Kelly echoed that sentiment with a longer view.
“There’s going to be a lot of records that Paul Skenes will have as he continues to go throughout his career,” Kelly said. “How he prepares. How he competes. What a start today and what a season he’s had.”
For a Pirates team that finished well below .500, Skenes was the one constant that gave the fanbase something to show up for every five days.
Whatever the Pirates decide this offseason, Skenes has already secured his place in the record books. Two seasons in, two sub-2.00 ERAs, a franchise ERA record, and a Cy Young award that looks increasingly like a formality.
The phenom label no longer applies — Skenes has graduated to something more permanent.
What People Are Saying About Paul Skenes’ Historic Season
The NL Cy Young race now centers squarely on Skenes. After finishing third in the voting during his 2024 rookie campaign — a season in which he still posted a 1.96 ERA in 23 starts — Skenes enters the award conversation this time as the clear frontrunner.
His 1.97 ERA, 216 strikeouts, and just 11 home runs allowed over 185.2 innings form a statistical case that will be difficult for voters to overlook.
The only real counterargument is win-loss record, a metric that has steadily lost influence in modern Cy Young voting as analysts and voters alike have shifted toward ERA, FIP, and strikeout rate as more reliable measures of pitcher performance.
The broader debate around Skenes and the Pirates reflects a tension that runs through MLB as a whole: what happens when a generational talent lands on a small-market team with limited financial ambition?
Skenes is under team control through the 2029 season, giving Pittsburgh years of cost-controlled production at the top of their rotation. Whether the organization uses that window to build something meaningful around him — or simply banks the savings — will define how this chapter of Pirates baseball is ultimately remembered.
Skenes’ arsenal gives him every reason for long-term optimism regardless of team context. His fastball consistently sits in the upper 90s and touches triple digits, pairing with a plus splinker — a hybrid splitter-sinker — that generates elite swing-and-miss rates at the bottom of the zone.
His strikeout-to-walk ratio has been among the best in the league in both of his professional seasons, and his ability to work deep into games limits the exposure of a Pirates bullpen that has been inconsistent.
Historically, the pitchers Skenes draws the most natural comparisons to are those who combined overpowering stuff with elite command from the earliest stages of their careers — names like Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, and more recently, deGrom in his prime.
What separates Skenes from most young power pitchers is that he has not gone through the typical adjustment period. Hitters have not found a reliable way to exploit him, and his performance metrics have held steady across different lineup types, ballparks, and game situations. That kind of consistency at age 22 is genuinely rare.
For Pirates fans, the immediate question heading into the offseason is whether ownership will treat Skenes’ Cy Young-caliber performance as a mandate to upgrade the roster.
Pittsburgh ranked near the bottom of the league in payroll in 2025, and the gap between what Skenes delivers on the mound and what the team puts around him has become impossible to ignore. A rotation anchor of his caliber typically commands a supporting cast built for contention. Right now, the Pirates are not that team — and the clock on Skenes’ team-controlled years is already ticking.