The Pittsburgh Pirates announced Wednesday that Paul Skenes, MLB’s top pitching prospect and the first overall pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, will make his major league debut Saturday against the Chicago Cubs.
Skenes, who has been on the baseball world’s radar since an eye-popping 2023 season with the LSU Tigers, during which he set the SEC’s single-season strikeout record with 203 en route to LSU’s College World Series victory, pitched just 34 minor league innings before the callup.
Since being drafted, Skenes has been compared to Stephen Strasburg, the hard-throwing Washington Nationals right-hander who had a similar speedrun through the minors, being drafted first overall in 2009 and making his MLB debut in June 2010.
Ironically enough, Strasburg made his debut against the Pirates and had an all-time outing, striking out 14 hitters over seven innings. The much-anticipated debut was aired nationally on MLB Network.
Skenes’ debut was originally set to air only in the Pittsburgh and Chicago markets, but on Thursday afternoon, MLB Network added the game to its schedule for Saturday.
Earlier Thursday on the Baseball Today podcast, former MLBN host Chris Rose and former major leaguer Trevor Plouffe said Skenes’ debut is a big deal for baseball and insisted that it had to air nationally somewhere.
Paul Skenes’ debut is the most anticipated pitcher arrival since Stephen Strasburg pic.twitter.com/okQWDOLztA
— Chris Rose Sports (@ChrisRoseSports) May 9, 2024
“I don’t think this is going to be on national TV. I think this is in FOX’s window for their weekend, and I think it’s 4:10 in the afternoon, Pittsburgh time,” Rose noted.
“Is there any way we can put this on national TV?” he asked.
And the league’s network answered.
Though, if a national broadcast wasn’t going to be possible, Rose floated an interesting alternative—featuring the game as MLB.TV’s Free Game of the Day. The league’s streaming service for out-of-market games currently offers one free matchup daily for non-subscribers.
“Make as many eyeballs get to wherever you can so that we can watch this guy,” says Rose. “Let’s make it feel big. As big as it is to us, that love the game. It should be as important to those people that are running the friggin’ game.”
It seems that message got through to Major League Baseball.
Due to their organizational ineptitude for most of the past 30 years, the Pirates rarely find themselves on national TV. Perhaps Skenes’ arrival can change that this weekend and moving forward.
