LSU’s Paul Skenes is a modern pitcher in the making

He didn’t know about revolutions or spin rates. He had never heard of TrackMan data or Edgertronic cameras. When he tried to pitch, stepping on a portable mound inside a workout facility, his back shoulder dipped like a seesaw before he sprung toward a net. The year was 2017. Skenes was a freshman at El Toro High School in Lake Forest, Calif. Maybe 15 feet from his session, a few kids sat on workout machines, chatting and waiting their turn.

Forgive them for not knowing to watch closely.

“He was rawer than raw,” said Eugene Bleecker, the founder of 108 Performance, where Skenes first trained with a focus on biomechanics. “But he was obsessed with figuring it out.”

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Skenes was always a modern pitcher in the making, a blend of art and science and unbending will. At Air Force, his first stop after high school, he was a two-way player who once sprained his ankle in the fourth inning, caught another two, then pitched the final three to close out a win. At Oregon State, on an official visit after he decided to transfer, Skenes found his new slider grip when he and the pitching coach played catch before his flight. At LSU, where he landed before this season, he asked to sit with Wes Johnson, a former major league pitching coach, while Johnson sifted through the information that showed up in detailed scouting reports.

Learning, tinkering, trying whatever might help him improve, are habits the 21-year-old can’t kick. And as he grew into his body, sprouting to 6-foot-6 and built like a tight end, they’ve helped Skenes become LSU’s towering ace, a pitcher the whole baseball world expects to be a top-five pick in July. He could very well go second to the Washington Nationals if the Pittsburgh Pirates don’t take him first. There are others in the mix, namely outfielders Dylan Crews — the consensus top player and Skenes’s college teammate — and Wyatt Langford and Max Clark. There are also obvious injury risks to selecting a pitcher so high, since no arm is designed to throw a 101-mph fastball, then do it again, then again and again and again.

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But throughout the season, and more recently in the men’s College World Series, he’s offered a question to any team considering anyone else: Do the uncertainties outweigh the risk of passing on a potential generational ace? And do they want to find out?

“I’m sort of addicted to finding edges,” Skenes said. “It’s fun to dig and dig and keep finding ways to get better, get ahead.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered if this was 10 years or 50…