Pirates pull a curious move with the struggling Paul Skenes

It may officially be time to worry about Paul Skenes.

Pittsburgh Pirates manager Don Kelly revealed to reporters on Saturday that Skenes will not be making his next scheduled start on Sunday against the Boston Red Sox. Instead, Skenes is being pushed back to Wednesday against the Detroit Tigers.

Kelly added though that the move was not injury-related, per Jason Mackey of MLB.com. Instead, the Pirates would like to give Skenes more recovery time, Kelly said.

That is a rather curious development though with the reigning NL Cy Young winner Skenes. During the 24-year-old’s last start on Tuesday against the Miami Marlins, he was pulled after only 65 pitches thrown (and later indicated that he wanted to go deeper into the game).

Skenes’ velocity has been a question mark over the last several weeks as well. Against Miami on Tuesday, the righty flamethrower failed to throw a single pitch at 97 mph or faster for the first time in his MLB career. Prior starts also showed that Skenes’ pitches had been steadily trending downwards in speed.

The Pirates do not have an off-day until Skenes’ new scheduled start on Wednesday. With that marking over a week since Skenes’ last (abbreviated) outing, fans are understandably getting concerned about the ace pitcher’s status.