Paul Skenes built his reputation as a pitcher, but the edge that helped turn him into one of baseball’s top starters started on the other side of the battery.
At Air Force, his workload was unlike anything else in the sport. When the Falcons were protecting a late lead, Skenes would sprint from catcher to the bullpen and warm up as the pitcher so he could finish the game on the mound. “It was pretty superhuman,” said Sammy Kulasingam, Skenes’ teammate at Air Force.
That background still shows up now with the Pirates. Skenes came up as a catching prospect, and even after five years away from the position, he says the lessons from behind the plate still shape how he attacks hitters.
“You're doing the same thing; you're trying to achieve the same goal,” Skenes told MLB.com. “You're just doing it from the two opposite ends.
I think catching was really good in terms of reading swings and getting a feel for the game. It can only help when you're pitching.”
His path away from catching really started to take hold after he transferred to LSU. Skenes remembers the position fading from his life when his name stopped appearing in batting practice groups. By then, he was expected to be the ace on the best college team in the country.
LSU head coach Jay Johnson said the plan initially had Skenes as a two-way player, with time at designated hitter and first base. Skenes led the Tigers with nine homers in the fall of 2022, but the staff eventually saw the toll hitting was taking. Once the workload at the plate was reduced, his pitching took off even more.
“We watched him evolve into the best pitcher on the planet by peeling [hitting] back,” Johnson said. “That was what was best for Paul.”
Air Force had already seen the same kind of growth. While juggling military training, Skenes was still handling pitch calling both behind the plate and on the mound.
Former Falcons pitching coach Ryan Forrest said the staff watched him develop into a star and worked to get the most out of him. In his sophomore season, Skenes started on Fridays, served as the DH on Saturdays, caught on Sundays and also caught one midweek game.
By then, the former 5-foot-11 recruit had become a 6-foot-6 force. In a game against Nevada, a batter hit a home run and admired it a little too long for Skenes’ taste. The catcher stood over the plate waiting for him to get back so he could let him hear it.
Doyle Gehring, an Air Force pitcher, remembers Skenes pumping his fist behind the plate when he wanted a big pitch. On mound visits, Skenes adjusted his message to the pitcher in front of him, telling Gehring to raise the intensity.
Former Air Force head coach Mike Kazlausky said Skenes had some of the softest hands he had seen at catcher, while Forrest said his best trait there was “dunking” pitches at the top of the zone to frame them for strikes. And the arm was obvious.
“Paul's the field general,” Kazlausky said. “He was going to be a first-round pick as a catcher.”
That same feel for the game has carried over on the mound. During a dominant run at LSU, Skenes hit a rough patch and allowed three-plus runs in three straight games.
Before his next start against Auburn, then-pitching coach Wes Johnson suggested changing the pitch mix to keep hitters off balance. LSU catcher Alex Milazzo said most pitchers would struggle to pitch backwards, but Skenes had such a complete grasp of his arsenal that it never rattled him.
Milazzo also said Skenes seems hyperaware of how his pitches move because of his catching background, and he rarely needed mound visits because he already understood how to manage the game. LSU assistant Jamie Tutko believes that background also made him more athletic than most pitchers, with arm angles shaped by his years as a catcher.
“He's using everything to create an advantage,” Johnson said. “His catching background absolutely helped him understand hitters better, their weaknesses, how to make life difficult on them.”
Even after the switch became permanent, the urge to catch never fully disappeared. Milazzo said Skenes never caught bullpens, but he did do some receiving work in the cage one day, which had everyone holding their breath because of the risk of injury.
Forrest said it was clear the pitching would eventually outgrow the catching. CJ Gillman, who originally recruited Skenes to Air Force, still wished he had caught at LSU simply because he enjoyed watching him play the position.
A lot of people around Skenes still think he could handle big league catching. Skenes, though, said he would not want to repeat the Air Force routine of catching and pitching in the same games, knowing it was manageable four days a week but far different across an MLB schedule.
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