One of the surprises on this MLB Opening Day was definitely Paul Skenes‘ exit in the first inning. Fans and experts were left stunned to see what became the worst start of his career, right after winning the Cy Young Award 2025.
“He said, ‘It’s too early to push it,'” Skenes said, revealing the conversation he had with his Pittsburgh Pirates manager after being pulled. “That was about it.”
It was a disastrous outing in which he allowed five runs and recorded only two outs after throwing 37 pitches. With the top of the lineup coming up, manager Don Kelly removed the ball from Skenes.
It was the shortest start of his career by three innings and the worst first inning of his career by three runs – something totally unusual for him.
What did Paul Skenes say about it?
“I’m not as upset about this, for me personally, as people would probably think,” he said. “They did a really good job. It was an abnormal outing.”
“You gotta look at it for what it is,” he said. “There wasn’t a ton of hard contact. The leadoff walk is not great, but some balls landed – the Jorge Polanco ground ball, stuff like that. The batting average on balls in play was super high today. That’ll go down as the MLB season goes on.” He laughed.
It will be a moment to turn the page, because it looks highly unlikely that this will happen again. If it did, it would be a total disaster for the Pittsburgh Pirates organization.
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