“So what if he’s young? He’s not going to be scared out there. If he had any fear at all he'd have shown it in our games. I haven’t seen any fear in him yet.
“Why shouldn’t I start him? He knows how to pitch and he’s well rested and they’ll have six righthanded batters in their starting lineup. I picked him because I think he’s our best bet to get started right.”
The All-Star Game starting pitcher was a controversial pick, if only because despite a 1.78 ERA he had made just 11 starts, ranked 33rd in the league in innings and was a rookie. The year was 1976. The pitcher was Mark Fidrych. The American League manager who made the right decision, as quoted above, was Darrell Johnson of the Boston Red Sox (who, in an unrelated development, would be fired six days later).
Here we go again.
Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates owns a 1.90 ERA but has made just 11 starts, ranks 58th in the National League in innings and is a rookie. And he should start the All-Star Game on Tuesday as surely and as appropriately as Fidrych did 48 years ago.
Skenes is not so different from rookie All-Star starters Fidrych, Fernando Valenzuela (14 starts in 1981) and Hideo Nomo (13 starts in 1995). He deserves the start for three reasons:
1. The moment of a true and rare pitching phenom arrives only once. There is no “paying your dues” here. Skenes was drafted 12 months ago. He quickly has become the pitcher fans most want to see because he is new to MLB, throws 100 mph and is unbeatable.
2. Like Fidrych, his performance is equal to his celebrity quotient.
At All-Star Break
3. The top NL choices based on merit are unavailable. The three NL pitchers with the lowest WHIP are Tyler Glasnow of the Los Angeles Dodgers (on IL), Chris Sale of the Atlanta Braves (pitches Sunday) and Zack Wheeler of the Philadelphia Phillies (missing his start Sunday due to back tightness). The next tier of starting options include Ranger Suarez of the Philadelphia Phillies, Hunter Greene of the Cincinnati Reds and Reynaldo Lopez of the Braves.
Here are all 11 strikeouts by Paul Sꓘenes in case you missed it.
— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) July 11, 2024
Play of the Day presented by @STIHLUSA pic.twitter.com/inUgh4YsN7
Sorry, but celebrity, fan appeal and history win out here, especially for an event that is purely an exhibition. There has never been a pitcher who started a career like Skenes:
Most Strikeouts While Undefeated, First 11 Games
Back in 1976, baseball and the All-Star Game held a more vaunted position in the much less crowded sports entertainment landscape. With The Bird on the hill, the 1976 All-Star Game drew a whopping 53% share, topped only by the 1970 All-Star Game since ratings are available (since 1967). The President of the United States, Gerald Ford, threw out the first ball.
Fidrych was a much bigger cultural phenomenon than Skenes. Two years removed from working on cars in a Massachusetts garage, he was not even on the 40-man roster of the Detroit Tigers when the 1976 season began. He made two relief appearances before manager Ralph Houk put him into the rotation May 15. (Skenes made his first start May 11.) Fidrych immediately captivated the country with his curly locks, the way he spoke to the baseball between pitches (“C’mon, slider! I need you right now”), how he would drop to all fours to smooth the dirt of the mound to his liking, his naivete and the way he put so much movement on his pitches. He was a groundball machine.
At a time when not every game was televised, fans filled Tiger Stadium to watch him pitch. Two weeks before the All-Star Game, Fidrych dominated the Yankees in a famous Monday Night broadcast that sent his fame soaring.
After that game, notoriously ornery Yankee catcher Thurman Munson, who took exception to his theatrics, growled, “If he pulls that stuff in New York we’ll take care of him.”
When told of Munson’s comments, The Bird replied, “Who’s Thurman Munson?”
“He’s the Yankees catcher.”
“Did he play tonight?”
“No. He’s got a bad leg.”
“Then the hell with him.”
Jim Palmer called Johnson “an idiot” over his pitching staff selections, especially because Johnson picked Catfish Hunter and not Palmer. Hunter was a former Cy Young Award winner who by the All-Star break had made 20 starts and thrown 175 innings. Yet Hunter took a back seat to Fidrych. Hunter was the first reliever out of the bullpen behind The Bird.
Fidrych captivated the national media with his news conference at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia the day before the game. Of his starting assignment, Fidrych said, “This is the most exciting thing to happen to me since I bought a mini-bike when I was 14.”
Fidrych pitched two innings and gave up two runs. Pete Rose opened the first inning with a single. Steve Garvey followed with a triple and scored on a groundball by George Foster. Fidrych took the loss in a 7–1 NL win.
His pitching line did not matter. The final score did not matter. What mattered was MLB gave Fidrych the moment he had earned. Yes, celebrity should matter when it comes to the Midsummer Classic. After all, the starting position players are picked by the fans as the players they most want to see. Skenes has that kind of appeal. But Skenes also has the performance to back it up, like Fidrych.
Ask yourself: who started the All-Star Game last year? It was Zac Gallen and Gerrit Cole. Both were very deserving, but neither was a national phenomenon. That’s typical of All-Star starting pitchers. But almost a half century later, the legend of Fidrych in 1976 remains alive. It was his moment, and it would not have been the same if he pitched in relief in the game. Now it is Skenes’s moment. Like The Bird, he deserves the start.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Pirates Rookie Sensation Paul Skenes Absolutely Deserves All-Star Game Start.
