What's Wrong With Paul Skenes? Inside the Cy Young Winner's Velocity Drop

Tuesday night in Miami, Paul Skenes averaged 95.7 mph on his four-seamer and never touched 97. The reigning NL Cy Young winner was out after five innings and 65 pitches. Esteury Ruiz took a 95.5 mph heater out in the third. Bryan Reynolds robbed Griffin Conine at the wall in the fifth. The Pittsburgh Pirates still lost 2-0 to the Miami Marlins.

Don Kelly said it was not an injury. The radar gun, the walk totals, and a 3-13 record in Skenes' last 16 starts say something is still off.

Skenes is 9-11 with a 3.88 ERA over 134⅔ innings. That is more than double the sub-2.00 marks from his first two big-league seasons. Over those last 16 starts he has a 5.00 ERA and 5.3 innings per outing. This is not a bad month. It is most of a season.

The velocity slide is not a one-start story

Skenes' four-seam average has come down every year: 98.8 mph as a 2024 rookie, 98.2 last season, about 96.9 in 2026. Tuesday pushed it into new territory. MLB.com had him at 95.7 mph on the night, topping out at 96.5. He generated four whiffs on 34 swings, a 12% miss rate that was the lowest single-game mark of his career.

Kelly has been direct that this is not a health scare. "Anybody this time of the year is not injured, but in August, nobody is 100 percent," he said after the Marlins game. He pulled Skenes because the velocity was down, the ball was leaking armside, and he thought the bullpen gave Pittsburgh a better chance. Yohan Ramírez threw three hitless innings after that. The decision looked right in the moment. It still would have been unthinkable a year ago.

Command is doing more damage than the radar gun

The walk rate is the number that travels. Skenes is at 6.8% this season, up from 5.7% in 2025 and 6.2% as a rookie. He walked four in consecutive starts against Cincinnati on July 31 and the Milwaukee Brewers on Aug. 5. Against Milwaukee the velocity actually looked closer to normal, 97.1 mph average, and he still needed 34 pitches to get through a three-run fourth.

Kelly's theory goes past mechanics. "I think you see a guy who set the bar so high from his first two years in the Major Leagues," he said, via MLB.com's Jason Mackey. "He's going out there trying to achieve that same bar. The league is going to adjust." Then the part that actually explains Tuesday: "Yes, the velo's down. I think command has been a bigger thing, at least for me. That could come from multiple things. From trying too hard or trying to be too perfect. Maybe trying to get the velo back. He knows it's down a mile per hour. You can't just go and get it."

MLB.com's midseason look had Skenes throwing a career-low 46.4% of his pitches in the strike zone, below the 48.7% league average. That is a pitcher hunting perfect instead of attacking. Fastballs that used to finish at-bats now start long innings.

The splinker isn't the same pitch

Skenes' signature offering, the splitter-sinker hybrid everyone calls the splinker, carried his rookie year. MLB.com had it in the 100th percentile in offspeed run value then. The run value has cratered, and the usage has followed, from 28.4% of his pitches as a rookie to about 11.3% this season.

After his worst start of the year, eight runs (seven earned) in four innings at Philadelphia on July 1, he leaned back on the four-seamer. That is a reasonable search for a fix. It also means the pitch that used to make the fastball look faster is not in the mix enough to do that job.

Sports Illustrated's season-long cut makes the same point from the other direction. The four-seamer's run value is still fine. The offspeed stuff is not. Hitters are sitting on the change and the splitter now that the heater does not get on them as fast.

What Skenes is actually saying

He has downplayed the radar gun all summer. "I don't think velocity is something I need to pitch well," he said around the All-Star break. "I think it's probably the first time in my career the velo has kinda dipped. It's not something that I'm stressed over at all. I'm healthy. I'm feeling good and still pitching at a high level."

After Tuesday he offered a workload explanation that does not show up in the innings column. "I know the innings total isn't super high right now," he said. "I think I've probably had more 30- to 35-pitch innings this year than I have probably in the last two years combined, so that doesn't help either. It's still volume, even if it doesn't show up on the innings total. That's probably part of it too."

He did not fight the hook. "If I were the manager, I'd probably do it too," he said. "[Kelly] walked me through everything and it all made sense. I wish I could have gone more, but you know, it kind of is what it is."

On the club's slide, he refused the easy villain. "I don't think you can really point at any one person," he said. "There are probably a few of us in the clubhouse that would say that we can pitch a little better, hit a little better, a little better defense or whatever it is."

Pittsburgh can take the ball from him now

The Pirates are 58-63, last in the NL Central, 16 games behind Milwaukee and several games out of the last Wild Card spot. That changes the math on a 65-pitch night. There is less reason to push a 24-year-old former No. 1 pick through a game that does not carry October, and more reason to get him to 2027 with the arm intact.

That is the honest read of Tuesday. Kelly can say it was about winning the sixth inning. Both things can be true. The Pirates are not treating Skenes like an untouchable ace right now, because the results have not earned that treatment for two months.

AthX Engine (our projection and scoring system) has him at 285.64 pitching fantasy points on the season, 7 FP in Miami. Over the 16-start skid that is 125.65 FP, about 7.9 per start, well under his season rate. Fantasy points measure what already happened. Share price is what the market will pay. They move together, but they are not the same number. See dynamic pricing if you want the mechanics.

The projection still has him at 536.48 fantasy points, which is the model saying a Cy Young arm can still finish like one if the command comes back. Tuesday did not look like that arm. It looked like a pitcher managing volume, hunting a mile per hour he cannot simply take back, and leaving in the fifth because his manager no longer assumes the next inning will be better.

Track Skenes and the Pirates on the marketplace. Information only, not financial advice.

*Sources: MLB.com on Skenes vs. Marlins; MLB.com first-half velocity Q&A; MLB.com vs. Brewers; TSN on the 65-pitch exit; TribLIVE recap; Newsweek on Kelly; CBS Sports on the 3-13 stretch; MLB.com standings; AthX Engine daily scoring through Aug. 11, 2026. Information only; not financial advice.*