When Will Paul Skenes be Called Up?

4-13-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

I expected to get asked this question on a daily basis almost from the day he was drafted, and I can count on one hand the number of days that have passed without it.

The problem is, the answer has always been different than fans want it to be. Meaning the well earned assumption many have is that there is a magic money date where he gets the call. Super 2, or the extra year of service time, or whatever, and the reality is, it’s dependent on quite a few things that remain completely unpredictable.

Let’s reiterate the plan for Paul that I first started telling you would play out in January and now you’ve had the benefit of Spring Training and the beginning of the MiLB season to see play out.

The Bucs will slowly build Paul Skenes up to around 5 innings and they’ll take all of the month of April to do so. This is an effort to make sure when he is called up he still has innings to give toward the back end of the season. They’ll top him out around 160-170 innings in 2024 so blowing 40 of them ramping up in MiLB would be counterproductive.

Beyond that, it’s always also depended on Paul’s performance, and the performance of the MLB staff.

Paul has done his part, and the Pirates just allowed him to go 3.1 innings for the first time last night. Fans laugh at that .1 but the real progress is the ups and downs. That .1 represents another half inning in the dugout and back up to hot on the mound. A skill he already has but part of the extremely slow build up plan they have for him.

Another thing fans should know here, Paul Skenes is fully on board with and aware of the team’s plan.

When I say Paul has done his part…
In 3 games he’s thrown 9.1 innings, his ERA is 0.00 his WHIP is 0.64, a whopping 19 strikeouts vs only 2 walks and 4 hits.

He’s done it with a pitch arsenal of old and new pitches, I mean he’s making up pitches at this point. 2 of his K’s yesterday were on his changeup that he’s barely had a use to introduce yet.

He’s um, pretty damn good.

Here’s the poop though, the Pirates are in the midst of 7 straight quality starts from their much maligned starting rotation, the bullpen is performing too.

This isn’t to say that Paul Skenes isn’t incredibly more talented than 2 or 3 of their starters right now. It’s not to say the team would be hurt by pulling the trigger on calling Paul up, but for who?

Bailey Falter was the obvious play in the pre-season but aside from his first inning of his first outing, honestly, he might have the best run going of the five. It won’t be Keller under any healthy circumstances.

Martin Perez has been great. Marco Gonzales has more than held his own. Jared Jones has his own phenom story going on and aside from some long balls he’s absolutely shown he belongs.

So, it’s fair to say, what’s the rush? Right?

I mean, you’d be right to think Skenes is a talent that can’t be held back, so it could be as simple as looking for the weak spot and making a move to the bullpen for one of them. They could even decide Jared Jones needs some polishing, and no, I’m not saying he’s performed like he needs that, but we know he’s got much of the same innings load concern that Skenes is carrying, so they could use them off of each other in a way to manage the situation potentially setting up having both of them down the stretch.

Honestly, they could pretty easily wait for Super 2 if it’s going well, and you can call it whatever you want, if the starting 5 is performing like this you’d be hard pressed to make a case of it.

Let’s clear up some other things here.

Super 2 isn’t predetermined, and they just proved it to you with Jared Jones, every bit a comp here. If you really think that’s the simple answer, you’re simply ignoring evidence to the contrary, and all the other factors we just spoke to.

He could right now go longer than 3 innings, the Pirates know that, Paul knows that, again, it’s about saving inning now, so he has them to give later. They aren’t holding him back on innings trying to prevent injury, they’re holding him back to get him on schedule and tramp down the innings. It has nothing to do with how many strike outs he’s getting, it’s all about the decided upon path.

They won’t use a 6 man rotation in MLB, and the reason is this simple, you don’t make such a huge scene out of getting a guy on MLB schedule and then change said schedule once you call him up.

So when?

If you think I or anyone has a hard and fast answer, you didn’t read this entire thing.

I’ll say again, by May he’ll be at 5 innings, after that, it could quite literally be anytime. I can say it will be at home, they won’t care about who the competition is and once he comes up, he won’t go back down.

This is best case scenario, because if the rotation wasn’t performing, they’d still be ramping him up at this speed, and frustration would undoubtedly be building. That doesn’t mean it’s without challenges and interesting happenings now. Nobody saw Bailey Falter as more than a month long mistake who’d wind up being DFAd, and you can’t easily say that right now. Marco’s arm didn’t fall off. Perez doesn’t look like a guy who should be in the pen, Keller just extended, off to a slow start, but he’s safe and finally Rookie Strikeout king Jared Jones is shoving against the stars of MLB without blinking.

All of this matters, so if you really think it’s just some financial choice, I actually feal bad for you, you’re missing a tremendous story unfolding while you wait with your arms crossed.