What Hunter Greene sees when he watches Pirates young ace Paul Skenes

PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes has the hardest fastball of any starting pitcher in baseball, but the Cincinnati Reds were ready to hit it in the series opener at PNC Park on Monday. The Reds made hard contact four consecutive times against that pitch, so Skenes had to adjust.

Because he has plenty of other standout pitches to turn to, Skenes went on to allow just one run in six innings with seven strikeouts in a win over the Reds.Skenes was the top pick in last year’s MLB Draft because in addition to a generational fastball, he has a 95 mph splitter, an 81 mph curveball, a changeup and a splitter that he’s confident throwing in just about any count.

Reds starting pitcher Hunter Greene watched closely from the dugout.

“He’s a great talent,” Greene said. “He’s fun to watch. He has a lot of skill. He seems very advanced for his age.”

In 2022, when Greene made his MLB debut, there were eight starting pitchers who threw at least 30 pitches of 100 mph or more during that season. This year, there are only three pitchers who fit that description. The two hardest-throwing starting pitchers are Skenes, and Greene, the 24-year-old who was the No. 2 pick in the 2017 MLB Draft.

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Greene studies pitching, and he has pointed to veterans like Jacob DeGrom, Sandy Alcantara, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander as pitchers that he regularly tunes in to watch. This year, all four of those pitchers are injured.

There’s a new young wave of hard-throwing No. 1 starters on the rise in MLB. Skenes, who has a 2.29 ERA through seven big league starts, is on track to be a part of that group. Greene is working to get there.

He embraces an opportunity that he and Skenes are both experiencing: leading a starting rotation at a very young age.

“You have to continue to learn and grow,” Greene said. “You ask questions. You watch the game and become a student of the game. You understand what you need to get better at. Learning to do those things at a young age puts you in a better position for when you start to get more experience.”

Greene’s slider is better than Skenes’ slider, but Skenes has the better overall arsenal of off-speed pitches. The Pirates’ rookie showed them on Monday.

Skenes got seasoned hitters like Jonathan India and Spencer Steer to whiff at strike three on a hybrid pitch that has the velocity of an ordinary fastball, the movement of a splitter and the overpowering sink of a standout sinker.

“When a guy throws 101 mph, as a hitter, you’re looking for the fastball,” Reds center fielder TJ Friedl said. “He mixed a lot of pitches in there. His splitter, his curveball, his slider, his changeup. He mixed his pitches well today.”

Greene’s offering of off-speed pitches represents his next step. He’s turning the corner with his splitter, and he’s developing his curveball behind the scenes.Greene can still hit 100 mph with his fastball when he needs it. But a big lesson that he has learned in the big leagues is that fastball velocity isn’t the end-all, be-all.

“It’s about understanding how to pitch,” Greene said. “Throwing harder is not always the best. Knowing that in certain situations, that’s been big.”

Greene has learned that he doesn’t always have to throw his fastball as hard as he can. His velocity used to be less predictable from game-to-game and from inning-to-inning. Now, Greene is commanding his fastball more consistently, and he has been more deliberate about when he hits 100 mph.

His average fastball velocity isn’t as high as it could be, but Greene has developed the ability to reach back and throw his very best fastball when he needs it the most. It’s been one of the big keys to his solid 2024 season, and he has a 3.13 ERA over his last nine starts.

“He’s holding his velocity really well,” Reds pitching coach Derek Johnson said. “It’s still really good into the sixth and seventh innings. That tells me that he has been pretty good staying consistent. He’s not at 100 mph early in the game and then falling to 96 or 94. He maintains that the entire time. And when he needs a little extra, he can find it.”

Greene is making these adjustments on the fly in MLB because of the limited experience that he got before he reached the highest level. The Reds drafted him out of high school in 2017, and he pitched in only 42 minor league games before he made his big league debut. Due to an elbow injury and COVID, Greene missed out on reps that he needed to develop.

Greene went on to make the Reds’ Opening Day roster in 2022, and just about every start over the last three years has been a different type of experience for him.

Skenes’ path to the big leagues has some similarities. As a freshman at Air Force in 2021, he was a catcher and a relief pitcher. He made only 34 starts in college and 12 starts in the minor leagues before he made his MLB debut on May 11.

Just like Greene, Skenes was 22 years when he became the face of his team’s big league rotation.

“It’s a reminder,” Reds manager David Bell said. “Being able to handle being in the big leagues at this point is always very impressive. Clearly (Skenes) is pitching well. He knows how to use his stuff to compete in the Major Leagues. It’s the same thing with Hunter. When players get to the Major Leagues at such a young age, there’s a lot of development left to do. You learn every time out there. Hunter has done a nice job with that and is continuing to do that.”

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: What Hunter Greene sees when he watches Pirates young ace Paul Skenes