Trending
By Jarrod Prugar
For the Mirror
Prior to Tuesday's 6-4 loss to Harrisburg, the Pittsburgh Pirates announced that Altoona's Paul Skenes would be shut down for the remainder of the season.
Skenes, the first overall pick in this summer's MLB Draft, made two appearances with the Curve and five overall in affiliated baseball this summer.
He breezed through six of his 6ª innings of action in the Pirates' organization. The ª innings of struggle came in his Double-A debut where he allowed four runs on three hits. Skenes finished the summer with 10 strikeouts and allowed only five hits.
Although he was only slated for 20 innings in 2023 after a heavy workload at Louisiana State where he led the Tigers to the College World Series championship, the move to shut him down came as a major surprise.
Skenes was on the Pirates' broadcast speaking of looking forward to facing former LSU teammate and the No. 2 overall pick of this summer's draft in Dylan Crews this week.
The Curve had been promoting his start and the faceoff as well with a commemorative poster giveaway on Saturday which will still be happening. Altoona sold nearly 3,000 tickets for Thursday as of Tuesday.
Though, it doesn't make sense to everybody, Pirates general manager Ben Cherington mentioned Skenes "checking all of the boxes'' set forth by the organization as the reason behind the shutdown.
Curve manager Callix Crabbe reiterated those boxes following Tuesday's game.
"He got to the number that we were looking for, 130 innings this year," Crabbe said. "It was an opportunity to get him on that five or six day cadence, something that he didn't get to do in college. It's a very different routine so that was nice. And we also give him a chance to use a new baseball, which is something that he had to obviously get accustomed to."
Those boxes included experiencing the schedule, travel and the routine of affiliated baseball as Cherington told a pool of reporters ahead of the Pirates' matchup against the Milwaukee Brewers Tuesday night.
He also worked on his pitch repertoire, which was a heavy focus in his last outing for the Curve Friday night in Erie. Skenes went two innings where he struck out four and allowed a hit.
"In the last start he had in Erie, that entire team was looking for 99 and up, straight and he was doing 97 would you know 18 inches of movement and that change up? What a beautiful, what a beautiful gift that he has," Crabbe said.
For Skenes, the plan at the moment is to stay with Altoona and prepare for the offseason and 2024 season.
"I think in terms of the things that we were looking to accomplish, he accomplished all of those things, and it's an opportunity now to slow it down a little bit and get prepared for 2024."
Skenes has not been made available to the media since being placed on the development list.
CREWS CONTROL: While baseball fans won't get to see Skenes take on Crews Thursday, they'll still get to see Crews in action all week.
Crews went 2-for-5 with two singles against the Curve Tuesday night.
He's far from the biggest prospect Altoona has seen recently after facing Bowie's Jackson Holliday just a few weeks ago, but it's another chance to showcase skills against a potentially elite player.
"It's an opportunity for some of our younger guys to go up against someone that some think might be future Major League All Star," Crabb said. "I think it's fun. They're excited for it just like Akron was excited to face Paul."
GETTING CRABBE: In the bottom of the eighth inning Carter Bins fouled a ball off his foot or so he and the 3,507 people in the crowd not on the umpiring crew thought.
The umpires met and then deemed him out at first after he didn't run out the ground ball.
This led to a few choice words from Crabbe which ultimately led to his ejection, the third of the season.
"It was extremely clear that it hit him on the foot. There was a big change of direction and I even heard it, quite frankly from third base," Crabbe said.
The call thwarted what could have been a productive inning for Altoona and took the bat right out of Bins' hands.
"I think once he doesn't make that call, and it was a 3-0 swing that I gave the green light on that he fouls it off," Crabbe said. "If he's 3-1, there's an opportunity he's been swinging about. Well, that's an opportunity for us to potentially get something out of it. I'm not saying it's a home run, but taking that opportunity away obviously impacted the game."
It might have changed the complexity of the game at that moment, but it's something that should've been seen way before the third base coach saw it.
"For me it's it was really simple, I was the furthest away at third base and I don't know how I saw it more clearly than they did," Crabbe said.
TRIP, TRIP, TRIPLE: Curve third baseman Andres Alvarez was the lone member of the lineup with multiple hits against Harrisburg.
Alvarez tripled home Jacob Gonzalez for the first Altoona run of the game in the bottom of the second inning. He would add a single in the seventh inning and another in the ninth.
He would score in the ninth with Jackson Glenn's two-RBI single that also scored Gonzalez.