Paul Skenes gets well-deserved love in MLB.com's pitch rankings

As they get set to embark on the back half of their season and pursue a spot in the playoffs, the Pittsburgh Pirates' starting rotation boasts one of the top pitches in baseball.

With analysis based on Statcast's Run Value system, Brent Maguire of MLB.com ranked the best individual pitches from the first half of the 2024 MLB season. Unsurprisingly, Pirates rookie flamethrower Paul Skenes made the list despite only having 11 major league starts under his belt – because, of course he did.

According to Maguire's rankings, Skenes has the best sinker in baseball at a +13 run value. In a way, though, this could be considered cheating, given that the sinker in question is actually Skenes' trademark sinker-splitter hybrid (referred to as a "splinker" by the majority of the baseball community), but it's classified by Statcast as a sinker for purposes of pitch tracking.

Maguire's runners-up in this category (with more traditional sinkers) include Sean Manaea of the New York Mets and Miles Mikolas of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Skenes incorporated the splinker into his arsenal this spring, and the results been absolutely devastating for opposing hitters — they have a .157 batting average and .457 OPS against the pitch. What makes the pitch so uniquely effective is that it has the velocity of a sinker and the vertical depth of a splitter. A pitcher throwing at 95 mph with negative vertical movement sounds practically unheard of ... unless, of course, that pitcher is Skenes.

Hybrid 'splinker' is just one of several lethal pitches in Paul Skenes' stacked arsenal

The incorporation of the splinker has merely sophisticated Skenes' already formidable pitch arsenal that includes a sneaky slider, a highly effective changeup, and four-seam fastball that regularly hits triple digits. He has taken MLB by storm, carving up opposing batters left and right – including some of the top hitters in the sport.

Skenes dominated in his first All-Star Game appearance, when he tossed a scoreless inning against the fearsome top of the AL lineup that included the New York Yankees' lethal one-two slugging punch of Juan Soto and Aaron Judge.

Skenes is the likely front-runner for NL Rookie of the Year, and the splinker has played a major role in getting him there.

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