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I have no idea what’s wrong with Paul Skenes, but it sure doesn’t seem like the answer is “nothing.”
Plus: The Angels keep making moves, Jose Cuas makes a memorable delivery and Tyler Kepner was there for Cal Raleigh’s blunt assessment of himself and the Mariners.
I’m Levi Weaver — welcome to The Windup!
What’s going on with Skenes?
In Tuesday’s Power Rankings, we identified ways that each team could feel good about their second half. My Pirates entry included this:
Skenes’ average fastball velocity has gone from 98.8 (2024) to 98.2 (2025) and was all the way down to 96.5 in July. So far in August, it has crept back up to 97.1, so maybe that’s a good sign?
Reader, it was not a good sign.
Here’s the pitch velocity list from last night’s Pirates-Marlins game. Skenes’ fastest pitch of the night was just 96.5 mph — the 75th-fastest pitch of the game, and the worst mark of his career by nearly a full mph. I combed over all 80 of Skenes’ career starts, and the trend has become undeniable:
- 2024: Hit 100 mph in all but five of his 23 starts. An even 100 pitches hit triple digits.
- 2025: Hit 100 mph just 13 times, but still hit at least 99 mph in all but two starts (223 total pitches at 99+).
- 2026: Skenes has only hit 99 mph on three pitches.
As Johnny Flores Jr. reports here, Skenes has repeatedly insisted that the velo dip is intentional, and that there’s no injury. OK, sure. Nevertheless, the results seem concerning. After posting sub-2.00 ERAs in each of his first two seasons — and winning the NL Cy Young award last year — he’s sitting at 3.88 this season (and a ghastly 5.20 in the 15 starts leading up to last night).
Meanwhile, the Pirates (58-63) have continued to slip out of wild-card contention. They’re now 0-4 in Skenes’ last four starts and 9-16 in his starts this year.
For now, the diagnosis is still a mystery. But something is amiss.
More stars struggling in 2026: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has just seven home runs this year. None of them have come at home. Meanwhile, new arrival Luis Arraez is slumping in Philadelphia.
More stars insisting they’re fine: Bryce Harper’s knee soreness has flared up a bit since moving to the outfield.
Middle Relief: Raleigh addresses ‘awful’ play
After last night’s 4-1 loss to the Yankees, Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh was honest about his and his team’s shortcomings at the plate. Tyler Kepner was there.
The Mariners have been the most baffling, maddening team in baseball. With a roster of prime-age players who nearly reached the World Series last fall, Seattle should be cruising through the tepid American League West.
Instead, the team is sinking fast, the trident pointing down.
The Mariners (56-64) are eight games under .500, with a five-game losing streak, a daunting upcoming schedule and the fewest runs scored in the majors. Catcher Cal Raleigh feels responsible, and he unburdened himself last night.
After another punchless loss, 4-1, to the Yankees in the Bronx, Raleigh asked to address the media. The manager traditionally speaks first after games, but Raleigh took questions for nearly 10 minutes before manager Dan Wilson.
“We’re not playing well. That starts with me — I’m awful,” Raleigh said after striking out on a fastball well above the zone to end the game. “So it is what it is. I’ve got to find a way to be better and to help bring the guys along, and we’ve just got to play better.
“Ultimately, we’re just playing very, very, very bad baseball in every facet of the game. We’ve got to pick it up from the energy standpoint, to the execution, to the little things in the game that help you win baseball games. And we’re just not doing those right now.”
Few players have ever experienced the kind of wild swings in production, from one year to the next, as Raleigh has. After another 0-for-4 night on Tuesday, he was hitting .159 with a .563 OPS, both the lowest in MLB among players with at least 300 plate appearances.
In 2025, Raleigh was the sport’s breakout star, setting a single-season home run record for catchers and switch-hitters, with 60. He batted .247 (modest, but a career-high) with a .948 OPS and carried Seattle to the seventh game of the ALCS, the deepest October run in franchise history.
Raleigh was never going to duplicate such a magical season, but this one has been just as much of an outlier. The emotional toll has been taxing.
For the rest of Kepner’s story, click here.
Overhaul: Angels fire Maddux, among others
In a process that began sometime around the end of 2018, the Angels continued to shake things up yesterday, firing pitching coach Mike Maddux, bullpen coach Dom Chiti and assistant pitching coach Darryl Scott.
On its face, the decision makes some sense. The Angels rank 24th in the league in team ERA and dead last in walks allowed. (Of course, they also rank eighth in fewest hits allowed and sixth in strikeouts.)
Interim head of baseball operations John Mozeliak previously said that the coaches’ jobs were safe through the end of the season. But since then, “frustration with the inconsistency” of tech use apparently reached the point of action, he said Tuesday. Ironically, when the team parted ways with two pitching coordinators in 2023, the move came after Angels great Troy Percival suggested the team was relying too heavily on technology.
Back then, GM Perry Minasian explained the choice with a three-foot faux pearl necklace of words that amounted, essentially, to: “We decided we needed a change.”
Well, that’s been a common theme in Anaheim for a while now. Counting Mike Scioscia’s final year (2018), the team is now on its seventh manager and seventh pitching coach in the last nine seasons.
Pump Fake: From FedEx to MLB, re-meet Jose Cuas
I somehow missed this on Monday night, having switched over to rewatch that seventh-inning debacle in Toronto. So imagine my delight when I discovered this delivery by Royals reliever Jose Cuas:
The reason I love this isn’t just because it’s silly (though I advocate for embracing whimsy when it finds us). It’s because it is silly and actually serves a purpose!
The idea is to disrupt the hitter’s timing. Watch Muncy hunch down to begin loading his swing, then pop back up to start over. Mission half-accomplished! (You still gotta throw the pitch for a strike.)
Cuas is worth rooting for. An 11th-round draft pick by the Brewers in 2015 as a position player, he was released in 2018 and worked at FedEx for a while. After long days of work, he would go to a local park with his brother and throw, just learning how to pitch.
It was already a great story when our Alec Lewis wrote it for Cuas’ big-league debut in 2022. Since then?
- 2023: Traded to the Cubs.
- 2024: Claimed on waivers by the Blue Jays, later claimed on waivers by the Phillies.
- 2025: Released, signed to minor-league deal by Braves, released again, signed to minor-league deal by the Royals.
Cuas is on his third call-up this year, and it seems like “up-and-down guy” will be his role for as long as the sport will have him. Of his 128 1/3 big-league innings, just 25 1/3 of those have come in the last three seasons.
So if he wants to try a pump fake or some other wiggle — à la Johnny Cueto or Nestor Cortes — I hope it works. I hope it encourages other pitchers to get creative, and I hope this bizarro sport keeps finding new ways to delight us.
More from this Royals-Dodgers series: L.A. pitcher Blake Snell made his long-awaited return from the IL last night, pitching six innings of one-run ball in a 5-4 Dodgers win.
More on this bizarro sport finding new ways to delight us: It was Pope hat night for the White Sox!
Handshakes and High Fives
Tim Britton further explains the “fourth out” rule I went over yesterday. Meanwhile, Blue Jays sideline reporter Hazel Mae caught up with Max Scherzer, who explained how he knew the rule: It happened on his first Opening Day, back in 2009.
Evan Drellich has more on the Yankees’ partial sale to a private equity firm, and what it means for the franchise and the sport.
The Tigers (59-60) beat the Guardians (58-62) 6-4 and are now a half-game out of a playoff spot. If you want to “both sides” it, here’s Zack Meisel (Cleveland) and Cody Stavenhagen (Detroit).
All of a sudden, the Red Sox (64-55) are icy cold. They’ve lost four straight, including Adley Rutschman’s Red Sox debut last night.
In 2023, Matt Olson hit 54 home runs and finished fourth in NL MVP voting. His manager thinks he’s an even more complete hitter now.
Most-clicked in our last Windup: The GIF of the scoreboard rolling back from two outs to one.
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