Paul Skenes is set to make his MLB debut on Saturday afternoon at PNC Park when the Pittsburgh Pirates host the Chicago Cubs.
Skenes is arguably the most-hyped pitching prospect in more than a decade, with his debut garnering the type of interest that fellow first-overall pick Stephen Strasburg got when he debuted with the Washington Nationals back in 2010.
Skenes was the top pick in last year's first-year player draft and inked a record $9.2 million signing bonus with the Pirates. He entered this season with a composite prospect ranking of No. 8, ranking as high as No. 3 and as low on No. 10 on a sampling of publicly available prospect lists.
After striking out 209 batters in 122 2/3 innings in his final season at LSU, Skenes entered professional baseball and immediately lit the minors on fire. After small cups of coffee at lower levels of Pittsburgh's system a year ago, Skenes started this season at Triple-A Indianapolis, and all he's done in seven starts and 27 1/3 innings is strike out 45 against eight walks with a 0.99 ERA.
Sportsbooks are taking advantage of Skenes-mania with season-long strikeout props on the young right-hander. At DraftKings, you can bet Skenes over/under 109.5 strikeouts this season (-110 in both directions), while at FanDuel the number sits at 104.5 (-120 to the over and -106 to the under).
Most publicly updated projections systems have Skenes in the 95-110 range for strikeouts the remainder of the season — MLB senior writer Sean Zerillo cautions that the under is where he'd lean when betting this unique, in-season market.
According to Zerillo, you can assume with a normal workload that Skenes would make 19 more starts the rest of the season, and if that is the case he'd set Skenes' strikeout line around 100.5 for the rest of the season, using weighted averages of FanGraphs' ROS projections.
However, there's plenty of downside to that projection, mostly based on potential injury or innings limitations. There is a strong case to be made that, even if Skenes lives up to the hype in his debut season, the Pirates shut him down late to keep his workload limited if they are out of contention, as one would expect them to be.
As for the NL Rookie of the Year race, Skenes obviously has some catching up to do. The current favorite is Shota Imanaga of the Chicago Cubs, who has gotten off to a torrid start and has odds that range between +175 and +500. Right behind him is fellow Japanese import Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who began the season as the favorite and has performed well for the Los Angeles Dodgers. His odds sit in the +200 to +450 range.
Skenes also has has to contend with his own teammate, as fellow Pirates rookie Jared Jones is the third favorite for the award in the +600 to +700 range.
Skenes' odds as of this writing range as low as +750 at BetRivers and as high as +1700 at FanDuel.
