If Cherington is wrong? He probably won’t be around long enough to worry about the consequences.Boomers, Generation X, millennials-every 20 years or so we name a new generation. If he’s right, the Pirates may have a future Cy Young winner on their hands. Taking Paul Skenes means that Ben Cherington is betting that one of baseball’s oldest maxims – good pitching beats good hitting – still holds true. The Pirates drafted him to be a horse for the next half-decade, to give them a built-in advantage in an as-of-now hypothetical playoff series. I want Skenes to render Quinn Priester and Anthony Solometo middle-of-the-rotation arms. I want the Pirates to have two stoppers, Skenes and Mitch Keller, at the top of their rotation.
Gerrit Cole has so far been one of those “built different” types, but I’ll be disappointed if Skenes’ six years here (yes, I’m putting a clock on things the second he gets up to the big club – don’t delude yourself on that front) are only equivalent to what Cole did. Cherington and his scouts are rolling the dice on the idea that Skenes is “built different” in a way few pitchers are. Throwing the baseball that hard, that often, with that much spin invites potential arm issues. He’s most often compared to Strasburg, a man who had to battle through Tommy John surgery with the nationals. Picking Skenes isn’t without risk, of course. You see someone occasionally touching 102 and 103 on the radar gun, it has a certain effect on you. Plus, even casual college baseball fans got to watch Skenes do his thing for LSU in the College World Series. Skenes was the only player who had ascended to Crews’ stratosphere when it came to hype. Most fans seem happy with the pick, and that’s understandable. The Pirates, long scarce on truly elite pitchers, opted for the guy with the clearest path to becoming one.
Having the first pick does, however, guarantee access to the best arm, on paper. There’s also a thing called player development, and teams that are great at it can turn a late first-rounder, or a second-rounder, or just someone else, into an ace. I don’t buy the notion, pushed hard in the weeks leading up to the draft, that teams like the Pirates only have access to a true “ace” pitcher if they have the first pick in the draft statistically speaking, that isn’t true. People who watch amateur baseball think he could be the best pitcher in the majors sooner rather than later. If Skenes is as good as the Pirates think he is, as good as most scouts think he is, he’s the story. Under-slot bonuses and dollar allocation downstream in the draft should be secondary talking points, however. Skenes also reportedly will sign for about $500,000 under slot, which in theory allowed the Pirates to draft Zander Mueth, a high-school righty who carries with him the usual risk-reward proposition, with the 67 th pick. I’ll give Ben Cherington this much: He picked the only player other than Crews who felt like a legitimate first overall selection.
Oh, and he’s 6-foot-6, 250, doesn’t have a ton of wear and tear on his arm, owing to the fact that he’s a converted catcher, and has been called the best pitching prospect since Stephen Strasburg. The “why” for this pick was also pretty simple: Select a guy who can throw over 100 miles per hour with regularity, who also has a wipeout slider. Instead, all the smokescreens were just that, and the Pirates took Skenes, who had vaulted ahead of Crews on some draft ranking boards. There were legitimate concerns in the days leading up to the draft that not only would the Pirates not take Crews, but that they would take Florida’s Wyatt Langford, a great talent but someone seen as a notch below Crews, or worse yet, a high-schooler who, best-case scenario, would be three years away, probably more, from helping the team.
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