Where Does The Performance of Top Pitching Prospect Paul Skenes Rank?
Photo Credit: Jonathan Dyer/USA TODAY Sports
Pirates rookie right-hander Paul Skenes has debuted his electric stuff with 30 strikeouts over 4 starts and 22 innings pitched. Skenes, baseball’s number one pitching prospect and number two overall prospect, was drafted 1st overall out of LSU last year. He features a 99 mph 4-seamer, a 94 mph splitter, and an 85 mph slider; and he ranks in the 99th percentile in fastball velocity and the 98th percentile in strikeout rate.
Where does Skenes stack in this month’s xwFIP rankings? Let’s take a look at June’s leaderboard for the top 30 pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched (IP), displayed in Table 1.
Table 1: 2024 xwFIP leaderboard of top 30 pitchers with at least 20 IP
Mason Miller is still by far the most dominant pitcher in baseball in 2024, with a 1.14 xwFIP.
Miller is followed by Fernando Cruz, Garret Crochet, Ryan Thompson, and Griffin Jax in the top five. Closers Josh Hader, Edwin Diaz, and Emmanuel Clase all make the top 30. Diaz, with a 5.40 ERA and a 4.71 FIP to go along with his 2.31 xwFIP, has been one of the unluckiest pitchers in baseball, and has recently landed back on the injured list.
Skenes finds himself 29th among all pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched, with an xwFIP of 2.57. Had he qualified for the starting pitcher leaderboard (min 50 IP in Table 2 below), Skenes would be tied with Sonny Gray for 7th among starters.
Table 2 displays the leaderboard for the top 30 starting pitchers with at least 50 IP.
Table 2: 2024 xwFIP leaderboard of the top 30 starting pitchers with at least 50 IP
Jack Flaherty, Tyler Glasnow, Tarik Skubal, and Chris Sale join Crochet as the best starters in baseball. Pablo Lopez, Brandon Pfaat, George Kirby, and Michael King each have an ERA in the 4’s despite possessing an elite ability to limit quality of contact, and project to perform much better in the rest of the season. Yoshinobu Yamamoto ranks 15th among starters, two spots ahead of his countryman Shota Imanaga.
Can we say something on who have been the luckiest and unluckiest pitchers so far in 2024 - that is, those who have the greatest absolute difference between expected run prevention and actual run prevention? Let’s see Table 3 below.
Table 3: The ten “luckiest” pitchers in 2024
Calvin Faucher has an elite 2.60 FIP through 21.1 innings pitched, but has been hit hard so far in 2024. Giants ace Logan Webb has also had strong results despite the hard contact that he has allowed.
How about the unluckiest pitchers so far in 2024?
Table 4: The ten “unluckiest” pitchers in 2024
Enyel De Los Santos joins Diaz in the group of pitchers who have greatly underperformed their expected statistics. Cubs righty Kyle Hendricks, the only remaining Cub from their 2016 championship team, has a brutal 10.16 ERA and a 6.87 FIP, but has a much more respectable 4.55 xwFIP. Hendricks has recently been moved to the bullpen.
