Everyone around baseball was buzzing about one player in particular last week. Naturally, we have to talk about him first. And oh man, is there a lot to discuss.
Paul Skenes Debuts in Wild Pirates Win
We saw MLB’s top prospect Jackson Holliday come up to plenty of fanfare earlier this year. Last week, however, left baseball gripped in the throes of Paul Skenes-mania. The top pitching prospect made his debut with the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Chicago Cubs and was (mostly) as advertised. Through four innings, he racked up seven strikeouts while flashing his easy triple-digit velocity, a slider with a max of 16 (!) inches of horizontal movement, and his signature “splinker” which had Cubs hitters guessing.
Where does the “mostly” part come in? Well, he also had some bouts of wildness and gave up a pair of walks and six hits, leading to three runs. Those three aren’t entirely his fault as the bullpen immediately let the last two in, but rules are rules. His other, however, he has no one to blame but himself for as it was a home run given up to… *checks notes* …Nico Hoerner? A good hitter, for sure, but not someone known for his power stroke. I’m a Cubs fan and I DEFINITELY did not see that one coming when it happened. Funnily enough, his first hit was also given up to a trivia-worthy batter – Miles Mastrobuoni.
All of it comes together to give Skenes a 6.75 ERA after his first start. Not good, but the usual caveats apply for a single appearance. It wasn’t like Stephen Strasburg’s first start where he was clearly dominant, but Skenes flashed exactly what anyone would hope from him given his repertoire. His performance helped the Pirates cruise through the early innings of his debut, especially after Cubs ace Justin Steele coughed up one of his worst starts ever with three home runs and six runs in only four innings. Woof.
From there, however, the Pirates got up to some HISTORIC bullpen shenanigans (which we’ll discuss later) and gave the Cubs the lead… only for the Cubs to embarrass themselves even more than the Pirates by giving back the historic bullpen shenanigans and losing. It’s a wild, weird, and wacky game that I have to save part of for the Weekly Weird. For those who haven’t heard about what happened, I’ll give you a quick teaser – SIX BASES LOADED WALKS. Stay tuned. Or scroll to the end. I’m not a cop.
The Minnesota Twins Win Streak Finally Ends
Over the past few weeks, the Minnesota Twins have caught fire more than any other team in baseball and have surged into a surprisingly competitive AL Central race with the Guardians and Royals. It’s impressive, especially since they only won seven of their first twenty games to open the season and were vastly underperforming their expectations after finishing first in the division last year. A 12-game win streak helped them climb out of the hole, though a lot of credit should go to the infamous rally sausage.
It all began when infielder Kyle Farmer found a Cloverdale summer sausage in his locker and left it out for his teammates in the clubhouse. When hitting coach David Popkins brought the meat into the dugout during their April 22 series against the White Sox, the streak would begin with the wiener as a fixture of every game. Players would be thrown the lucky sausage after every big hit, and oh boy would the big hits keep coming. Over those 12 games, the Twins would hit a collective .308/.377/.517/154 wRC+ while clubbing 16 long balls.
Alas, all good things have to come to an end. Minnesota’s streak would finally die on May 5 with a loss to the Red Sox. It marked the second-longest stretch of consecutive wins in Twins franchise history. Although they’re not winning every day anymore, the original sausage is still around and the Twins keep rolling. Last week, they picked up some big series wins against the Mariners and Blue Jays and have since parked into third place, only two games out of first. They are undoubtedly a team to watch right now.
Phillies on a War Path
The only team that might be hotter than the Twins is the Philadelphia Phillies. Although the fightin’ Phils have been characterized in recent years by their slower starts and strong finishes, they’ve been locked in since the very beginning of the 2024 season and have only continued to heat up as the season progresses. As of today, they sit at 31-13, the best record in baseball by a good margin.
What’s made the “Stay Loose and Sexy” Phillies so impressive in the last week+ is how they’ve managed to keep rolling in the face of injuries. Trea Turner, their superstar shortstop, is currently out with a hamstring injury, yet it hasn’t hampered the offense with Edmundo Sosa stepping in and hitting for the best line of his career thus far – .313/.421/.521/169 wRC+. Even as their seven-game winning streak came to an end, they only lost one game last week and largely looked like the far superior team (as they should) over the frustrating Blue Jays and Giants and the dreadful Marlins.
Everything is working right now in Philadelphia with the offense humming along with the 4th-best team wRC+ in baseball at 116 and the 4th-best pitching staff by ERA (3.21) with the best FIP (3.27) league-wide, buoyed by the stellar performances of current Cy Young favorite Zach Wheeler (2.53 ERA, 2.71 FIP, 53.1 IP) and contender Ranger Suarez (1.37 ERA, 2.69 FIP, 59 IP). This is a scary team and they are quickly proving that the Braves don’t have the stranglehold on the NL East crown like many predicted.
Willson Contreras Out With a Broken Left Forearm
Unfortunate news out of St. Louis as Cardinals catcher Willson Contreras suffered a broken forearm after being hit by a swing from J.D. Martinez on Tuesday night’s match-up against the Mets. Unlike most incidents of backstops getting hit by bats, this came on the front swing and resulted in a catcher’s interference call. Contreras has since undergone a successful procedure to repair the fracture and is looking at a 6-8 week absence while he recovers.
Obviously, it’s an awful situation for everyone involved. The Cardinals, who are struggling massively in the NL Central, will be without their best hitter through this point in the season. Contreras is off to a stellar start with the bat with a .280/.398/.551 slash line with a 170 wRC+, the best numbers of his career. That stings for a team that ranks 25th in baseball in overall offense with an 88 wRC+. And that’s considering Contreras’s contributions.
However, there is some scrutiny to be pointed at the Redbirds. The reason Contreras was close enough to be hit by Martinez’s swing was because the Cardinals had worked with him to improve his framing. Part of that process was having the Venezuelan catcher set up closer to the plate to make it easier to steal strikes. Granted, St. Louis is far from the only team doing this – MLB has seen an uptick in catcher’s interference calls in recent years – but it’s a really ugly look at what happens when players are pushed into risky situations to get better results.
There might be a reckoning on this front sooner rather than later. This feels like the kind of incident that finally spurs action.
Weekly Weird
Alright, it’s time. Let’s revisit Skenes’s debut, shall we?
Specifically, let’s visit the top of the fifth inning. Skenes came back on briefly, but, after a pair of quick hits, he was pulled in favor of reliever Kyle Nicolas. Nicolas is 25 years old, in his second year in the majors after a cup of coffee in 2023, and is already about to begin one of the most hellish innings of baseball any pitcher has ever faced.
His first two batters both ended in strikeouts. Easy enough. With only one out to go, however, he plunked Ian Happ and quickly spiraled into despair. He proceeded to throw four straight balls to Nico Hoerner to bring a run home for the Cubs. 6-2. Then, he did the exact same to Michael Busch. 6-3. Then, he did it AGAIN to Miles Mastrobuoni. 6-4. As a fan watching this game live, I already felt so much better about our chances of winning this one. The Pirates had just let the Cubs back into the game with three gift-wrapped runs. Little did I, or anyone else know, that this was only the beginning.
Nicolas was himself relieved after failing to record that last out, leaving Josh Fleming to somehow get out of the mess. He doesn’t. He does the SAME THING Nicolas just got pulled from the game for, walking Yan Gomes to bring the score to 6-5. Hey, at least he did it on five pitches this time. Mike Tauchman tacks on one more with an infield single which I can only assume became a base hit because the baseball gods were that appalled by the display. Tie game. Oh, hey, did I mention it was raining? It was raining. It was POURING. The Pirates could not get out of the inning before a 2-hour and 20-minute rain delay, meaning they had to stew in their misery with the anxiety that they have to immediately come back out to traffic on all bases.
Colin Holderman is called upon after things clear up only to deliver ANOTHER four-pitch walk to Seiya Suzuki. The Cubs now have the LEAD 7-6. Even worse, he walks Bellinger immediately after on five pitches to give them a little cushion to work with too. How generous of him. This is a nuclear meltdown on a level I have never seen before. In fact, I literally could not have seen a Chenobyl-level disaster this bad in my lifetime because the last time this many bases-loaded walks happened in an inning was 65 years ago. I’m surprised it wasn’t longer.
Surely, the Cubs wouldn’t waste this God-given gift of a game, right? Sigh. They gave the lead right back in what feels like about five minutes give-or-take on a Yasmani Grandal homer and never really threatened again. 10-9. I’d like to posit that this Cubs team might be one of the worst good teams ever when it comes to their ability to consistently rack up ghastly losses. This wasn’t even close to their worst loss of the year, and yet it’s still an affront to the baseball gods.
This was a very long Weekly Weird, but very deservedly for such a historically weird game.
Bunting For Power 