Paul Skenes continues to lose velocity at an alarming rate and Pirates fans should be concerned

For the first two big-league seasons of Paul Skenes’ career, he was about as good as anybody in the history of baseball when it came to pitching.

Doc Gooden was genuinely the only comparison you could reach for when describing that kind of dominance to open a career. In that stretch, the Pirates flamethrower racked up a Rookie of the Year award followed immediately by an NL Cy Young, pairing a blow-you-away fastball with his signature splinker to make pitching look effortless.

You kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for some adversity to finally find him, but from his final year at LSU onward it really felt like Skenes was just going to carve up every lineup he faced until the end of time.

Well, 2026 has been anything but straightforward for Paul Skenes, and it’s genuinely alarming to watch.

Paul Skenes 98+ in each of his starts…

98+ MPH pitches thrown by Paul Skenes in each of his 78 career big league starts:

32, 38 34, 30, 46, 42, 32, 33, 21, 32, 21, 44, 22, 23, 14, 24, 30, 33, 40, 35, 31, 21, 11, 19, 26, 12, 29, 21, 25, 10, 22, 17, 26, 35, 27, 35, 29, 34, 29, 32, 40, 28, 30, 30, 25, 49, 35, 26, 27,…

— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) August 1, 2026

Here’s the Paul Skenes numbers, visualized:

The drop off is CRAZY for Paul Skenes

Paul Skenes has thrown just 95 pitches at 98+ MPH this season.

He surpassed that total in just three starts in 2024 and five starts in 2025 🤯

(h/t @CodifyBaseball) pic.twitter.com/nvGLYIhuq9

— DraftKings Sports (@DKSports) August 1, 2026

Those Numbers Have Gotten UGLY

Gone, at least for now, are the days of handing Skenes the ball every fifth day and simply penciling in greatness. After a nightmare Opening Day against the Mets, it took him until his eight shutout innings on May 12th to finally drag his season ERA back below 2.00, right where we’ve all come to expect it to live.

Since that start, it’s been rough. Over his last 14 starts, Skenes has posted a 5.18 ERA. Yesterday’s outing against the Reds, where he coughed up five runs in just four innings including two homers, has become far more the norm than the exception lately.

It’s bizarre to see. This is supposed to be the most untouchable young arm in the sport, and he’s getting knocked around like a back-end starter.

Now, Let’s Be Fair

If you genuinely expected Paul Skenes to maintain a sub-2.00 ERA for his entire career, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you. No matter who you are, no matter how nasty your stuff is, the league eventually makes an adjustment.

That’s just how baseball works.

The question is never whether the adjustment comes, it’s whether you can adjust to their adjustment. So a step back from historic dominance to merely mortal was always going to happen at some point but this feels like more than the league simply catching up.

The Velocity Alarms Are Real, and the Splinker Is the Tell

The scary part of this stretch is the red panic alarms blaring about his velocity. And here’s the genuinely interesting wrinkle. The reason Paul Skenes is getting clobbered isn’t really the dip in fastball velocity itself. It’s his precious splinker, the pitch that made him famous, that’s suddenly getting teed off on.

Follow the logic, though, because it’s all connected. If hitters no longer have to gear up for a 99 mph fastball, they can completely change their approach at the plate. They can sit on the splinker and hunt it without the fear of getting blown away by premium velocity.

That appears to be exactly what’s happening, combined with some inconsistent location. So while the fastball is technically still being effective on its own, there’s a clear trickle-down effect poisoning the rest of the arsenal. The whole thing works because of the fastball’s threat, and when that threat drops even slightly, everything else becomes more hittable.

The Obvious Concern Is Health

The easiest and most logical guess here is that Paul Skenes isn’t 100 percent healthy. A drop in velocity happens to every power pitcher eventually, that’s just the nature of throwing a baseball that hard for a living. Regardless, at 24 years old, that’s not exactly normal, and it’s the kind of thing that should have the Pirates monitoring him very closely.

When a young flamethrower suddenly loses a tick and his whole arsenal starts to suffer, health is almost always somewhere in the conversation.

The Timing Is Brutal for Pittsburgh

Here’s what has to be so maddening for everyone involved. The Pirates actually have a good offense this season. Of all the years for Paul Skenes to hit a rough patch, it’s the one where his usual dominance could have genuinely pushed this team into a postseason spot.

For years the Pirates wasted good Paul Skenes starts with a lifeless lineup, and now that the bats have finally shown up, the ace picks this moment to scuffle.

That’s baseball, baby.

Paul Skenes will be okay but something needs fixing

What a frustrating thing to navigate if you’re Paul Skenes, even though we all know he’s far too talented to stay in this funk for long. He’ll adjust, he’ll get healthy, he’ll figure out whatever mechanical or physical gremlin is sapping his velocity, and he’ll be back to terrorizing lineups soon enough. Guys with his ability don’t stay down for long.

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