Skenes could be MLB’s ticket to Gen Z

BRADENTON, Fla. — There are times when Paul Skenes, the 22-year-old, can’t escape Paul Skenes, baseball’s Next Big Thing.

It happens randomly and without warning. The reigning National League Rookie of the Year ran into former New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman at the Super Bowl last month. The now-retired three-time Super Bowl champion told Skenes he was a fan. Eyebrows raised and caught maybe more than a little off guard, Skenes quickly replied “same.”

A few days later, Skenes was minding his own business in the Bradenton-Sarasota airport after arriving for his second spring training with the Pittsburgh Pirates when he caught a glimpse of his mustachioed face staring back at him.

It wasn’t a mirror. It was one of the countless ads in the area featuring the flame-throwing right-hander who turned every one of his first 23 major league appearances (24 if you count the 2024 All-Star Game, which he started) into appointment viewing.

Throw in his upcoming cover appearance on the popular video game franchise MLB The Show and his recent guest spot on Late Night with Seth Meyers, and at times it can seem like he’s everywhere even if he believes he’s not.

If Skenes is being honest — and the former Air Force cadet is nothing if not pathologically sincere — he’s still getting used to the outsized attention he’s commanded since making his debut last May. Yet, it also beats the alternative. If his now fully-bearded mug isn’t plastered throughout Florida’s Sunshine Coast this time next year, he’ll know why.

“If I start sucking, my photo is not going to be (there),” he told The Associated Press recently.

A fresh ‘Face’?

Skenes understands in a way that belies his age that none of the trappings of his already remarkable success — the top overall pick in the 2023 draft finished third in last year’s NL Cy Young voting too even though he didn’t play a full season — will stick if he doesn’t find a way to build on one of the most remarkable rookie years in a generation.

Sure, the hype is nice. And yes, he’s learned to lean into it a little bit. It’s kind of hard not to when a baseball card featuring a patch of your jersey becomes arguably the hottest collectible in recent memory, your girlfriend happens to be one of the most followed athlete/influencers in the country and the stands are filled with little kids sporting No. 30 T-shirts and donning plastic mustaches of their own whenever you go to work.

Skenes finds himself at the confluence of the game and the culture at large. From a fastball that regularly hits triple digits to a “splinker” borne out of experimentation, he has the kind of “stuff” that sends baseball purists scrambling for superlatives. He couples it with a mix of swagger and savvy that could — in theory — make him Major League Baseball’s first Gen Z crossover star.

It’s a lot to take in for someone who was a late-bloomer by baseball standards, not truly coming into his own until his sophomore year at Air Force, where the former catcher developed so rapidly on the mound he made the difficult but necessary decision to transfer to LSU.

Ask Skenes if he wants to be the “face” of the game and he deflects. He’s been doing this as a pro less than two years. That kind of honorific, for the moment anyway, is reserved for the Shohei Ohtanis, Aaron Judges and Mike Trouts of the world, childhood idols quickly becoming peers.

Those guys have earned the right. He hasn’t. Not yet anyway.

Besides, “that stuff takes energy frankly,” Skenes said flatly.