Why Paul Skenes’ Criticism Is Still Being Misplaced

The beginning of Paul Skenes‘ career has been nothing short of tremendous. Prior to 2026, Skenes’ first two big-league campaigns were filled with accolades, including an NL Rookie of the Year Award, a Cy Young Award, and back-to-back All-Star Game starts. He was also one of the key pieces of Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, starting the semifinal victory for the USA over the Dominican Republic.

With his trophy case already filling up rapidly, there was no question that Skenes would have high expectations in year three. Especially as the Pittsburgh Pirates look to begin entering their next potential playoff window, Skenes is expected to lead this club back to the promised land at some point within the coming years.

However, Skenes has faced the most adversity of his professional career to date this season. It’s been a rollercoaster of extreme ups and downs, with his lowest point coming in July, when he pitched to a 6.25 ERA across 31.2 innings.

But when looking under the hood, there are a plethora of reasons for Skenes’ struggles, and some of the underlying data tells us that this season actually hasn’t been as bad as it seems. Naturally, though, the discourse around the league has led to some very unfair criticism being placed on his shoulders, which has undoubtedly been part of the reason this year has seemed worse than it’s been in reality.

Let’s dive in, examine this criticism a little closer, and explain why this is misplaced and misdirected.

The Fastball Discussion

When talking about Paul Skenes’ 2026 season and the discourse that surrounds his struggles, it would be impossible to ignore the conversation about his four-seam fastball. This pitch alone has generated plenty of concern from people all around the industry, as it’s playing much differently than it did earlier in his career.

For starters, this pitch has seen its velocity fall quite significantly, which has been the point many people have been focusing on when looking at this pitch. Last season, his heater averaged 98.1 MPH and touched triple digits 13 times, but this year, it’s been a completely different story.

In 2026, Skenes’ average fastball velocity sits at 96.9 MPH, a 1.2 MPH drop from last year. To make matters worse, Skenes’ fastball hasn’t touched triple digits one time this season, peaking at 99.5 MPH back on April 13. In fact, he’s only reached 99 MPH three times this season, with two of these three pitches coming in the first half.

While the change in fastball velocity cannot be ignored, an important distinction that people often fail to account for when talking about his fastball is that it’s still playing fairly well. In fact, in most cases, it performed almost identically to how his fastball has in previous seasons, and in other cases, it’s actually performing better.

For example, in 2026, Skenes’ fastball has generated a lower xSLG, xwOBA, and hard-hit rate, while also inducing a higher whiff rate. In the areas where his fastball has performed poorly, the differences are purely marginal, at best. Skenes’ fastball possesses an xBA of .206, an increase of .006 points from his mark last season. The same can be said for his strikeout rate, which decreased by just 2.4%.

Interestingly enough, despite often seeming like it lacks the authority it had earlier in his career, the numbers show us that Skenes’ fastball is just as elite as it’s ever been. If you examine it by run value, Skenes’ four-seamer has been worth 10 runs this season, more than in his rookie season.

When it comes to the dip in his fastball velocity, the conversation has also quickly become speculative. Many people were concerned about Skenes’ physical well-being and shape.

However, back in early July, I wrote a comprehensive deep dive into his struggles, and in this story, I noticed that Skenes’ mechanics were a larger concern than anything, as many of his movements correlated with things that would lead to a lack of fastball velocity.

This has been a point that’s rarely been discussed outside of a small segment on MLB Network a few weeks ago, but it is a massive contributor to his struggles in this department. With this issue appearing to be purely mechanical, it should hopefully be something he can fix in the offseason, which should lower concern and criticism around this pitch.

Unluckiness and Things Out of Skenes’ Control

Aside from the discussion around his fastball, another narrative that’s been deeply underdiscussed has been his sheer unluckiness all season long. In many of Skenes’ worst starts, the innings that blew up for him were due to things out of his control, but they don’t end up showing up in the box score that way.

For starters, the 2026 Pittsburgh Pirates have been a defensive nightmare. As a team, they’ve posted a -20 Fielding Run Value, a mark that ranks them the sixth-worst defense in the entire sport. Taking things one step further, the only team in the National League with a lower defensive run value than the Pirates is the Colorado Rockies, which shows just how bad they’ve been this season when in the field.

Fortunately for us, there’s a stat that can help explain a pitcher’s true effectiveness by removing their defense’s impact on their game: FIP. Skenes’ ERA of 3.97 is much higher than his FIP, which comes in almost a full point lower at 3.07.

If you look at the ERA leaderboard, Skenes’ ERA ranks 30th in baseball among qualified starting pitchers, the lowest it’s ever ranked in his short career. However, when you take a look at the FIP leaderboard, he ranks ninth in baseball.

Skenes is still very elite, and his defense is not doing him any favors. As you can see in this comparison, a lot of his poor surface-level metrics could be attributed to the poor gloves behind him. Keeping this in mind, things get worse when you begin to factor in the timing of impactful hits allowed and the abysmal bullpen that’s been behind him quite often.

This season, Skenes has left the game with 16 runners on base, which is also known as bequeathed runners. Of these runners left on base, the reliever who followed Skenes has allowed seven of them, which are then attributed to his ERA.

To put in perspective just how much this has impacted his final numbers, Skenes has never left more than six runners on base for the bullpen to manage, and the bullpen has never given up more than three of his stranded runners. Both of these marks have been more than doubled in 2026, which is mind-boggling to think about.

After doing some quick math, we can see that if these additional runs hadn’t been scored, Skenes’ ERA would currently sit at just 3.43, which would take him up to 23rd on the ERA leaderboard – seven spots higher than where he currently resides.

Although they’ve been much better in the second half, the Pirates’ bullpen during the first half of the season was nothing shy of abysmal, and they’re a huge reason why the team currently sits three games below .500 while possessing one of the top offenses in the game. During the first half, the bullpen boasted a 4.48 ERA, the seventh-highest mark in baseball.

Essentially, even though Skenes has gone through his fair share of struggles and unpleasant outings this season, a lot of the discrepancies in his surface-level metrics cannot be attributed purely to his performance on the mound. His defense and bullpen have both worked against him pretty hard this year, and it’s a huge reason why his numbers are suffering.

The Ups and Downs of an Elite Career

Now that we’ve talked about some of the reasons as to why Skenes’ criticism this season is being misplaced, we can dive into one final point: Superstars have down years, and that’s okay. Even if this idea seems simple on the surface, it’s worth mentioning as a simple reminder. This sport is built on failure and imperfection, and expecting flawless play is unrealistic no matter how well a player has performed up until this point.

Back in 2003, Pedro Martinez capped off the fourth-most valuable season of his career by bWAR (8.0), finishing with 206 strikeouts in just 186.2 innings pitched, while also boasting a 2.22 ERA. This led him to a third-place finish in Cy Young Award voting, and a 22nd-place finish in MVP voting.

What happened the following season in 2004? Martinez’s ERA skyrocketed nearly 1.70 points, finishing the season with a 3.90 ERA in 217 innings. It was his highest ERA in a season since 1996, and the first time it surpassed 3.00 since that same season. While it was disappointing, it was still a good year that saw him generate 5.0 bWAR.

Following his disappointing 2004 season, Martinez wasted no time getting back on track with the New York Mets in 2005. In this campaign, Martinez lowered his ERA to 2.82, struck out 208 batters in 217 innings, and posted a WHIP under 1.00 for the first time since his 2002 marathon. He was also named an All-Star and was worth 7.0 bWAR.

Tying this back to Paul Skenes, the point of bringing up Martinez’s three-year journey is to show that even the best pitchers of a generation go through ups and downs. Martinez went from pitching better than nearly every year of his career, to struggling in a down year, to rebounding the following season with another fantastic campaign. It’s very possible that the same is in store for Paul Skenes, as it’s just the nature of how the sport works.

Interestingly enough, both pitchers share another similar detail about these seasons: their down years were still very good. As mentioned earlier in this story, Skenes still ranks among the top of the league in ERA, FIP, and a slew of other categories, was named to the NL All-Star team, and he almost threw two perfect games at the beginning of this season.

Even if there are ups and downs, Paul Skenes is still elite; he’s just struggling, and it’s manageable.