So far, the baseball career of 22-year-old Paul Skenes has unfolded like a dream. After graduating from El Toro High School in Lake Forest, Calif. — the same school that produced St. Louis Cardinals superstar Nolan Arenado and San Francisco Giants Gold Glove third baseman Matt Chapman — Skenes starred as both a pitcher and catcher at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
His talent was so exceptional that his coach at Air Force knew Skenes had to move on. Three years at the academy triggers a service commitment, so at his coach’s insistence he transferred to LSU. There, Skenes quickly became the nation’s top pitching prospect, winning the championship game of the 2023 College World Series, then going to the Pirates as the consensus No. 1 pick in the MLB draft.
After just 34 2/3 innings of pitching in the minor leagues, Skenes made his big league debut on May 11, 2024, in a game against the Chicago Cubs, striking out seven in four innings.
Skenes went on to start the All-Star Game for the National League, win NL Rookie of the Year honors and finish the season with an eye-popping ERA of 1.96, the best by a rookie pitcher in the “live ball” era which began in 1920, and the second lowest-ever. (He did not qualify for the ERA title because he pitched fewer than the required 162 innings.)
Other than the fact that despite Skenes’ efforts the Pirates finished 10 games under .500 and out of the playoffs for the eighth straight season, baseball life could hardly have been better for Skenes at that point.
But according to the widely-used statistical projection system known as ZiPS, 2025 will present a significant downgrade for Skenes. His projected ERA in 2025 will be a respectable but unspectacular 3.24, the system predicts.
ZiPS is a system developed by baseball statistician Dan Szymborski. The acronym simply stands for “Zymborski Projection System.” According to the ZiPS projections published Wednesday by Fangraphs, Skenes will strike out 181 batters in 155 1/3 innings. Impressive, but Skenes himself has said that he plans to pitch 240 innings in the coming season. If the ZiPS projections are accurate, he is bound to be disappointed.
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After striking out 33.1 percent of all batters he faced last season — about one of every three — his strikeout percentage will fall to 28.8 percent in 2025, according to ZiPS. And after winning 11 games and losing only three, Skenes is expected to produce a more modest record of 8-6 in 2025, the ZiPS system forecasts.
A different projection system also used by Fangraphs, known as Steamer and developed by a high school science teacher named Jared Cross and two of his students, is somewhat more optimistic about Skenes’ 2025 performance.
Steamer sees Skenes pitching 188 innings — still 52 shy of his personal goal — with an ERA of 2.80. His strikeout percentage will fall only slightly, to 31.9, according to Steamer. But Skenes will allow 16 home runs, per Steamer, up from his actual 10 in 2024.
ZiPS projects 17 home runs allowed for Skenes, albeit in 33 2/3 fewer innings than under the Steamer model.
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