Pittsburgh Pirates: Paul Skenes Double-A Start to be Streamed

There is big news this weekend within the Pittsburgh Pirates Organization. The top overall selection, pitcher Paul Skenes, will be making his Double-A debut with the Altoona Curve. The game starts at 6:00 pm Eastern time and will be in Altoona. This is good news as Paul Skenes will get to take the mound at Peoples Natural Gas Field right away.

The game is sold out including standing room only, as the Curve announced earlier this week. This was somewhat expected but is also still very suprising. Skenes brought a crowd to the Bradenton Marauders game as well, filling up the stadium.

A Minor League game being sold out does not happen very often, the intrigue around Skenes both on and off the field have led to these outliers. The home stadium for the Cruve holds just over 7000 people. For a minor league game in a city like Altoona this is a really big night.

Unfortunately, if you want to be a part of the crowd you will not be able to. However, there is good news for fans who will not be in attendance. Friday morning the Altoona Curve announced that the game would streamed for free on MILB TV.

Again, the game is free to stream so why not take advantage of this opportunity to see the #1 overall pick pitch. In his last game out Skenes threw 2 innings instead of 1 like in previous appearances. Maybe now that he is at Altoona he will be allowed to go a little deeper into the game. It would be great to see him get through 3 innings at least.

I along with many other fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates are still holding out hope that the team will give Skenes a Big League opportunity by the end of this season. For this to happen Skenes needs to show that he needs to face higher levels of competition. Skenes is plenty developed as a pitcher being deemed one of the best pitching prospects ever. He needs to dominate if he wants to be treated as such and be moved up.