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The two best pitchers in the world were trading stories, about the beauty and loneliness and frustration and joy of their craft, when they stumbled upon a subject that left them equally animated. Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes, left-hander and right-hander, emotional powder keg and picture of stoicism, certainly have their differences. Their commonalities are far more plentiful. Both were terminally overlooked coming out of high school. Both regularly throw 100 mph. Both won Cy Young Awards last year. And both have been absolutely flummoxed when trying to throw a sweeper.
"If I see a new sweeper grip, I almost always pick the ball up and throw it that next day," Skubal said. "Like, almost every time. I can't get it, but I'm relentless. I'll get it one of these days. I'll get it. Or I'll get something else."
"I will say, the first sweeper I ever threw, the one I have right now," Skenes said, "I threw it into the parking lot at Alex Box Stadium over the bleachers."
The two laughed heartily, Skubal at the image of Skenes accidentally yeeting a ball straight out of LSU's ballpark, Skenes at the embarrassment that came from it. Talking for the first episode of "Sources Tell Jeff Passan," Skenes recounted the story of how arguably his best pitch came to be -- and, in doing so, explained what modern pitching has become.
It was Skenes' first day at LSU, where he had transferred for the 2023 season after two years at the Air Force Academy, and he was determined to throw a slider. Standard grips never worked for him, so he turned to the sweeper, a horizontal-breaking slider that gained acclaim in 2021 and was the pitch du jour by the next season. His maiden voyage went so poorly that after practice, Skenes noticed that his catch-play partner that day, current Chicago White Sox opener Grant Taylor, had added him on Snapchat. After accepting the request, Skenes received a photo of a lonely ball in a parking lot, accompanied by a caption.
"Nice slider," it said.
At the behest of then-LSU pitching coach Wes Johnson, Skenes kept at it. The more he tried, the better it felt. By the end of the year, the sweeper was his signature pitch.
"You just gotta stick with it, man," Skenes said.
"I mean, dude, for two years I've been trying this thing," Skubal said. "It's not good. I even throw them on the Trackman, and they're bad, and I'm like ..."
"Well, keep trying," Skenes interjected.
"I promise I will try the rest of my career," Skubal said. "But if you see me doing something on the mound and you're like, 'What the hell?' just know it was a sweeper."
Skubal and Skenes talking about pitching is like a conversation between Bach and Beethoven about composing, Picasso and Van Gogh about painting. They are artisans, evermore looking to perfect their technique, voracious workers for whom perfection is an impossible standard to which they nonetheless aspire.
Even short of that, their place atop the pitching pecking order is safe. Skubal, the Detroit Tigers' ace, has won two consecutive American League Cy Young Awards, and this offseason, he will receive a free agent contract worth well over $400 million, provided he remains healthy for the remainder of the season. Skenes, fronting the Pittsburgh Pirates' rotation, won National League Rookie of the Year in 2024 and followed it last year with his first Cy Young. They deeply admire one another because they understand that living in that echelon takes so much more than physical skill.
There is a curiosity shared by Skubal and Skenes, a desire to take the constants of the game -- the mound being 60 feet, 6 inches from the plate, the ball weighing 5 ounces and spanning just short of 3 inches -- and squeeze the best out of those parameters.
"It is pretty cool what you can do with a round ball," Skenes said. "My theory is that you can do whatever you want with a baseball. You just gotta figure out how to do it. I say this as a guy who throws, like, seven pitches."
"Right," Skubal said. "I mean, that works for you."
"It's cool now with all the science that we have," Skenes said. "I mean, you got the Edgertronic camera, the high-speed cameras that make it real easy. You can see what fingers are coming off the ball, but there's stuff you can do with mo-cap now that tells you if your body is compatible, if you will be able to throw a certain pitch with a certain shape and how you might be able to do that. And so it's pretty cool to see."
Pitching has evolved to a place wherein the advantage is quite clearly in their hands. It's not just the fastball velocity, which, over the past quarter-century, has jumped from an average of 89 mph to 94.6 mph this season. Nor is it in the pitching labs that have emerged around the country, tracking every throw to the tenth of a mile per hour and specifying its spins to a single revolution per minute.
For the pitchers who pitch better than anyone -- not just Skenes and Skubal but Boston's Garrett Crochet, Philadelphia's Cristopher Sánchez and a handful of other aces -- their mindset and approach are every bit as much a separator as their stuff.
"Me vs. me: That's what pitching is to me," Skenes said. "Obviously it's a team sport, but you're the one out there with the ball. If you execute your pitches, the hitter's out. Doesn't matter who's in the box -- for us. Sorry. Not sorry. ... Nobody knows if we execute our pitch or not, to some extent, other than ourselves and probably the catcher."
It wasn't always that way. Skenes had two Division I college offers out of high school in California: Air Force and Navy. Skubal emerged from high school in Arizona with one offer: Seattle University. Although Skenes wound up the No. 1 pick, that came only after his transfer to LSU, where he dominated the SEC and won a national championship. Skubal remained at Seattle and went in the ninth round of the 2018 draft.
"That's what makes baseball so beautiful," Skubal said. "You just don't see what's happened like this in other sports. Every kid kind of grows up loving it, and that's why when kids are going through whatever they're going through in high school or they're not recruited or whatever, it's like, just put your head down and get to work. Someone will notice in today's day and age. There's cameras everywhere and there's stuff to put out there and there's data to record some stuff on and you can earn every opportunity you want."
They earned theirs through work, iteration, tinkering. They didn't always throw harder than the vast majority of their peers. Skubal didn't always have the deceitful changeup that is his answer to Skenes' sweeper. They forged missions to find their apexes. They still haven't.
If the sweeper is Skubal's nemesis, the complete game is Skenes'. In 1996, the year Skubal was born, starting pitchers finished 290 games. By Skenes' birth in 2003, that number had dipped 209. The trend did not abate. Last year, starters completed just 29 games -- including the best-pitched game of the season by Skubal: a nine-inning, two-hit, no-walk, 13-strikeout masterpiece against Cleveland in which his final pitch was the fastest of his career at 102.6 mph.
"I have one career CG, eight innings, we lost, 1-0," Skenes said.
"I shouldn't laugh," Skubal said.
"Technically a CG," Skenes said.
"That's not funny," Skubal said.
"That's the next thing I gotta do," Skenes said.
"I've only got one," Skubal said, "so it's not like I'm racking these things up."
Skubal and Skenes are, in many ways, products of their time. And as that time continues to evolve, they often think about where pitching is going next. Because as the sweeper illustrated, changes in pitching don't wait for anyone. And when they arrive, it's incumbent on the pitcher himself to ensure he's not left behind.
"I'm actually curious to hear your answer," Skubal said, "because you came up in a different era."
"I don't know where it's going," Skenes said. "I know I'm curious what the models are going to be. I think AI is going to have something to do with pitching. I don't know what. There are some really smart people in this game, some who work for teams, some who don't, and I'm curious to see what they're going to come up with because some of the models that I've heard about and seen are pretty cool."
"I don't know how much pitching is going to change in the next five to 10 years," Skubal said. "I don't know how to predict that. Like, is it going to be more velocity? I don't know. That's hard to do. It's hard to get guys to throw hard. Is someone going to throw 108? I don't know. Maybe, but I don't know. I don't see it, but ... I mean, Mason Miller throws 103 and it looks pretty damn easy for him.
"So I don't want to say, 'No, no one will ever throw 108,' because if you told me he threw 108 tomorrow, I would say, 'Yeah, he probably did.' And I think that's where the game of baseball, pitching in itself, the change in the game and how much analytics and all that stuff you want to put into it, numbers and models and Stuff+ -- we can go down every number you want, but the game of baseball and pitching will never change.
"First-pitch strikes, getting to leverage, getting guys out early, limit three-ball counts. All that stuff will never change. That is timeless."
