Tim Benz: If pulling Paul Skenes was as easy as Derek Shelton says, it's even easier to critique his decision

After the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 1-0 win in Milwaukee on Thursday, manager Derek Shelton said it wasn’t a hard decision to pull rookie pitcher Paul Skenes with a no-hitter going after 11 strikeouts over seven innings.

That better not be true. That decision should’ve at least given Shelton significant pause.

Forget the no-hitter. If you must.

If you are the kind of fan who just sees accomplishments like no-hitters as frivolous statistical side notes, OK. I guess.

I bet you are really fun at parties, by the way.

But I’ll concede. Understood. A no-hitter is just a passing highlight clip on social media. Fine.

Would two of them in Skenes’ first 11 starts have meant a little more than that, though? Because he might’ve been able to do exactl…

Never mind. I digress. No-hitters are dumb, barstool whimsy for old-school baseball rockheads like me. Got it.

Yet, there are some folks with a modern analytics background who thought he should’ve kept pitching against the Brewers.

We need smarter pitch counts/workload management tools. Pulling guys because they approach a round number while they are cruising stress-free is just cya stuff. 100 over seven is much different than 100 over four or five innings.

— Travis Sawchik (@Travis_Sawchik) July 11, 2024

there's four days before the ASG, where he'd throw ~25 pitches

then you could have managed to get 6 or so more days of rest by not starting him in the first game or two after the break

the no-hitter was doable.

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) July 11, 2024

But what about winning the actual game? Does that matter? Could considering the final score have made Shelton’s decision harder?

I think it could’ve. I think it should’ve.

Leaving Skenes in the game for at least the eighth inning, as opposed to giving the ball to Colin Holderman, was the better path to victory. Skenes had only thrown 13 pitches over his previous two innings. The All-Star was buzzing, getting better as the game was going along, as he so often does.

Holderman, meanwhile, is in the midst of his worst stretch of the season. In his three previous outings to Thursday’s, the reliever had yielded seven hits, two walks and three earned runs over three innings.

Of course, Holderman came in and gave up a hit right away, eventually loading the bases before wiggling out of the jam.

Yet Shelton was dead set on putting him on the mound and taking Skenes off.

“He was tired,” Shelton said of Skenes during his postgame media scrum. “It didn’t have anything to do with the pitch count (99 pitches). It was about where he was at. It was about trusting your eyes. Trusting him. When I went and talked to him after (the seventh inning), he was tired.”

Well, if the seventh inning is how Skenes looks when he’s tired, then he probably needs to be near catatonic to be ineffective. And the way the 22-year-old describes things, that wasn’t close to being the case.

“I definitely wanted to finish it,” Skenes said. “But throwing every six days, five days, whatever it is now, … I definitely understand that side of it.”

Except that he won’t be throwing in a real appearance in another five or six days because of the All-Star break. At most, he’ll throw an inning in that game on Tuesday and then get a few more days off after that.

Skenes gave a very politically correct rendition of the conversation with Shelton after he was pulled.

Shelton talking to Skenes after the 7th. I don't like the face Skenes made. He looks like he's done. pic.twitter.com/hH33umFVR4

— Andrew Fillipponi (@ThePoniExpress) July 11, 2024

In my mind, however, this is how I imagine it went down.

Shelton: “Good job, Paul. Sorry, but you’re done for the day.”

Skenes: “That’s OK, Shelty. Dave Roberts will give me the chance to finish off one of these when I’m a Dodger in a few years.”

Seriously, doesn’t this have to be screwing with Skenes’ head? When you are in the hunt for a no-hitter twice in your first 11 starts, and you keep getting pulled despite finishing games on an uptick, does he start messing around with his approach early in games?

Shelton said after the game that he thinks Skenes’ best attribute is his “ability to adjust within the game.”

Agreed. I’ve written about that twice already in terms of Skenes’ willingness to call on certain pitches at various times in various starts and his ability to tinker with his approach once runners reach base.

As Shelton articulated following the game, the Brewers were adjusting their approach to attack him early in counts as the game wore along, and he was getting them out faster.

It seems to me, then, that Shelton should have been inclined to lean into that for at least one more inning.

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Another contradiction is how the Pirates tend to handle Skenes versus Mitch Keller in certain situations. Sure, Skenes is the bigger talent. But the Pirates have spent all week griping that Keller should’ve been an All-Star too.

Yet Keller has hit the 100-pitch mark six times this year, has one complete game and has pitched into the eighth one other time. He has yet to throw fewer than five innings in any start. He’s fifth in the National League in innings pitched at 111 1/3.

The funny thing is, the Pirates are already on the hook to pay Keller. They pledged $77 million to him before the season. Skenes has to get three years under his belt before he even hits arbitration. Yet Keller is seemingly allowed to sling it around for however long he looks to be performing well on a given night.

Where is the same level of concern when it comes to protecting the investment in Keller?

Whether Shelton was sincere in his remarks about not even having to make a tough call about what to do with Skenes on Thursday is anyone’s guess. But I do know that Skenes made one other manager’s decision very easy: Torey Lovullo’s.

Lovullo (Arizona Diamondbacks) is the guy managing the National League All-Star team. If he watched that outing and thinks that anyone else besides Skenes should be the starter in Arlington, Texas, on Tuesday night, then I’ve got more questions about him than I do Shelton at this point.

Perhaps Lovullo should start Skenes and then pull him after he strikes out the first two American League batters.

At least Skenes will feel right at home.

Listen: Tim Benz and Kevin Gorman talk about Paul Skenes, the All-Star game, the looming trade deadline, the draft and the Pirates’ erratic play