Save Paul Skenes’s Arm, For The All-Star Game

There was remarkably little public fuss when Pittsburgh Pirates manager Derek Shelton pulled Paul Skenes from Thursday's start against Milwaukee, even though Skenes had a no-hitter through seven innings and 99 pitches. Oh, there was the odd radio goof needing something to rail about on a Thursday evening drive-time in a heat wave, but mostly people have accepted the orthodoxy that no-hitters are disposable amusements in the new baseball while Skenes is a great white elk among all other drab woodland creatures, and must be preserved for his next start.

Which had damned well better be Tuesday in Arlington.

The Skenes phenomenon has run unabated since he was promoted to the otherwise lusterless Pirates, to the point where he could be considered the breakout name of the summer if you don't believe in soccer, women's basketball, or the Olympics. His raw numbers are preposterous, his secondary numbers otherworldly, and his mustache is bringing back the fashion statement of the World War I flying ace. A no-hitter would have been indisputably cool even if you do believe in soccer, women's basketball, and the Olympics.

But baseball is one of those sports in which those who thwart the talent have a massive advantage over the ones who have it. Nobody is tackling Simone Biles in the middle of her floor exercise. You can only foul A'ja Wilson so many times. Lamine Yamal has been French-kissed by the gods so his legs are still too fresh for the kicks that will eventually wear him down as they do everyone. And the Brewers, full of veteran hitters who early on accepted the reality that this would have to be a day of productive outs, decided the best way to deal with Skenes was to run up his pitch count so he couldn't torment them forever.

Yes, that's way inside baseball, and yes, that's a passive-aggressive way to deal with greatness, and yes, Shelton looks like Satan if he took a job at an advertising agency. But sometimes the best way to deal with the overwhelming is to wait it out until it erodes into simple whelmage. So that eight-pitch strikeout by Brice Turang in the first inning, that nine-pitch strikeout by Willy Adames in the second, and that 10-pitch strikeout by William Contreras in the third all played their part. They didn't improve Milwaukee's chances of scoring off Skenes, but the Brewers gambled that if they could get past him, they could win by assaulting the Pirates' stridently substandard bullpen.

It was a nice theory, anyway. The Brewers lost, 1-0.

But game 1,392 of 2,430 isn't going to stand out nearly as much as the All-Star Game, so saving Skenes for the future as Shelton did also saves him for the start in which the nation can decide if he is worth investing time in during what has been a busier-than-normal Cucumber Season, as the summer sporting doldrums are typically called. With the European Championships, the Copa America, the belated and lasting embrace of the WNBA, the looming Olympics, and the start of football training camps (which of course suck to high heaven but are proof that we need our heroin smoothies even when watered down), this has been a pretty eventful summer. Well, between those and watching your shoes melt.

But Skenes on Tuesday would be an added bonus, and NL All-Star manager Torey Lovullo seems to be leaning that way, even if it is only an inning or two, and if it is only one you will be right to feel cheated. Let's first see what he does in his start Sunday against the Phillies. I think we can feel his first official eighth-inning appearance coming on.

Update, 11:50 a.m. ET: He's the guy.