The reigning NL Rookie of the Year Paul Skenes is poised to be one of the NL CY Young favorites in the 2025 season for the Pittsburgh Pirates. The former LSU standout has made a huge name for himself for the last two years from winning the National Championship in his previous college year to flying through the minors system and dominating the MLB landscape last season. You don’t believe me? Well, let’s look into Skenes’s 2024 season.
Paul Skenes 2024 Production
Skenes in 23 starts last season had an 11-3 record with a 1.96 ERA and 0.95 WHIP. He also accumulated 170 strikeouts while only walking 32 batters over the year. Ever since getting called up in the middle of last season, he was the best pitcher in the big leagues and he was the obvious choice for the NL Rookie of the Year award. The beginning of his career was also impressive enough to earn him an All-Star game appearance even though his debut was in May.
Skenes was also impressive because his WAR at 5.9 was amongst the top players of the league as a rookie on a Pittsburgh Pirates team, which is average at best. Skenes has given hope to the city of Pittsburgh within one year of playing for the team. Here are his fantasy projections for the upcoming 2025 season.
Paul Skenes 2025 Projections
ESPN has Skenes as the second-ranked pitcher on their fantasy projections for the 2025 season only behind Shohei Ohtani. Here’s the stat-line projection for him for the upcoming season: 14 wins, 177.0 IP, 212 Ks, 46 BB, 2.90 ERA, 1.02 WHIP, 10.78 K/9. That stat line shows improvement because of the full season he’s going to have this season.
The Pittsburgh Ace should have a lot of opportunities for wins this year because he’s so elite and has elite stuff on the mound. Even though the Pirates are a below-average offense other than Oneil Cruz, Bryan Reynolds, and Ke’Bryan Hayes, Livvy Dune’s boyfriend will keep them in ball games to get to those 14 wins in my mind.
Baseball Reference has a similar projection for him in the counting stats but fewer wins and fewer strikeouts than the ESPN projections. They have him at 9 wins, 150 strikeouts, 2.69 ERA, 127.0 innings to name a few of the contrast to the ESPN projections. I think that the ESPN projections are more in line with what I think Skenes’s value will be this upcoming season because he is just that guy and I think he’ll continue to be that guy for 2025. Let’s get into my assessment of his value in more detail.
Final Thoughts
Paul Skenes is worthy of a top-ten pick in Re-Drafts this season as I could argue for a Top-5 pick. I know it’s a risk for starting pitchers in redraft as they go once every five days, but Skenes has the potential to have a legit CY YOUNG-worthy season this year in Pittsburgh as he is one of the preseason favorites to win the award other than the full Dodgers rotation.
It will be an interesting ride for Skenes and Skenes owners this year in fantasy and I think if you steal Skenes in the second round. I’m a huge believer in Skenes this year that I’m tempted to pick him with my first pick if I don’t have the number one pick.
Total Apex Fantasy is going to be a place to be this month. We have other MLB fantasy outlooks coming out for some of the other stars in the game, including one already on Ohtani on the sites. TA Fantasy is also the place to be for NBA DFS and the Super Bowl DFS articles coming out Next Week. 2025 will be another banner year for Total Apex Fantasy.
