PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Paul Skenes swept the two Pirates post-season awards being named the Steve Blass Award winner as best pitcher and Roberto Clemente Award for Team MVP.
“It’s cool,” Skenes said. “Just gotta keep going.”
“I don’t really come into the year with any expectations in terms of numbers and anything like that for myself. Obviously, I pitched pretty well this year, but I’ve grown a lot and I’ve learned a lot. That’s the thing I’m most excited about. I learned what I need to do and then also what we need to do. It’s been a solid year for me, but there’s room for us to get better, so we need to focus on that in the offseason.”
Skenes is the first pitcher since Joel Hanrahan in 2011 to win both awards and was a unanimous winner for both. The 23-year-old also won the Steve Blass Award in 2024. Only Mitch Keller, in 2022 and 2023, also won the Blass Award twice.
“I’ve just learned a lot,” Skenes said. “Teams are attacking me differently and the league is always changing. You look at teams that had success last year that aren’t having success this year, there’s a reason for that. I’ve seen a lot of that and learned a lot about how to pitch, really, because the book is out on me. Learned a lot there.”
Skenes said he feels good physically and the goal coming into the year was to be healthy and make every start. Not to jinx it, he said up to this point, he’s done that.
“The thing that stands out to me with Paul is the way he leads himself first, and the expectations he has for himself and how he works and goes about it every single day, which, along with his dominance on the field, gives him that voice because of who he is every single day with his teammates and how he goes about it,” said Pirates manager Don Kelly. “He leads by example, and he's not afraid to have tough conversations as well with other people on what we need to do to be able to continue to get better. Totally deserving of all the awards.”
The righty leads all of Major League Baseball with a 2.03 ERA, leads the National League with a 0.96 WHIP and is two behind Logan Webb (211) for the NL lead in strikeouts.