Paul Skenes spent part of 2025 already thinking about the one piece of his delivery that would need constant upkeep for the rest of his career: his arm slot.
That warning, which he gave to Dejan Kovacevic of DK Pittsburgh Sports in May 2025, is looking a lot more relevant now after a 2026 season that fell well short of the standard he set the year before. Skenes, at 6-foot-6 with long arms and a delivery full of moving parts, knew keeping his mechanics in line would never be effortless.
At the time, his arm slot had dipped a bit in April before settling back where it had been. He said then that the change did not hurt his stuff or his command. But after what followed in 2026, that small mechanical blip suddenly carries a lot more weight.
After capturing the National League Cy Young Award with a 1.97 ERA in 2025, Skenes finished 2026 with a 3.82 ERA. He still struck out hitters at a strong 28.1% clip, and his 4.2 FanGraphs WAR ranked 12th among qualified starters, but he was not the overwhelming force Pittsburgh had gotten used to.
The discussion around his regression has mostly centered on his fastball velocity dropping and the possible impact of his World Baseball Classic participation. But there is another part of the story that deserves attention: the changeup.
As MLB Trade Rumors recently pointed out, the pitch went from a major weapon to a major problem. In 2025, hitters posted only a .103 average and a .126 slugging percentage against it. In 2026, those numbers jumped to .233 and .384.
The pitch’s run value also swung sharply, falling from plus-nine to minus-six. On top of that, it lost 1.8 inches of vertical drop and half an inch of horizontal movement, turning into a flatter, straighter pitch.
The analysis also showed Skenes throwing from an arm slot roughly two to four degrees higher in 2026 than he had in previous seasons. That lines up with what he had already said a year earlier about needing to monitor that part of his delivery.
It is not possible to say the higher arm slot alone caused the changeup to lose bite, but it is clearly a connection worth watching. A different release angle could have changed the pitch’s movement or made it easier for hitters to pick up.
The drop-off was most pronounced against left-handed batters, the group Skenes leans on the changeup against most often. His strikeout rate versus lefties fell from 31.5% in 2025 to 26.7% in 2026, and their OPS against him rose by 83 points.
That said, the mechanics do not tell the whole story. Skenes also said the World Baseball Classic may have played a role in his fastball velocity decline, and his workload over the past three seasons gives plenty of reason to consider fatigue as part of the picture.
Even with the downturn, there is still plenty for the Pirates to work with. Skenes was not suddenly ineffective, and his 3.28 expected ERA suggests the talent is still there. The issue may be less about a pitcher losing his edge than about finding the consistency that once made him nearly untouchable.
For Pittsburgh, the encouraging part is that Skenes was already aware of the need to keep his mechanics in check before this problem fully surfaced. That kind of awareness could matter a lot as he heads toward 2027.
The Pirates need their ace at his highest level if they want to turn their first winning season since 2018 into something more. And if a small mechanical correction helps Skenes get his changeup back, his Cy Young form may not be as far away as his 2026 line suggests.
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