{"id":593717,"date":"2026-02-26T08:48:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T08:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/593717\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T08:48:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T08:48:26","slug":"pirates-paul-skenes-loses-4-strikes-to-abs-challenges-in-cy-young-winners-spring-debut-butler-eagle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/593717\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates\u2019 Paul Skenes loses 4 strikes to ABS challenges in Cy Young winner\u2019s spring debut \u2013 Butler Eagle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Paul Skenes watches a workout during spring training Saturday in Bradenton, Fla. Associated Press<\/p>\n

NORTH PORT, Fla. \u2014 National League Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes<\/a> lost four strikes to challenges in his first spring training start.<\/p>\n

Skenes struck out four and walked four over 2 1\/3 innings for Pittsburgh on Wednesday against the Atlanta Braves, who were 4 for 4 against the right-hander on challenges to get called strikes overturned to balls \u2014 one of them by the slimmest of margins.<\/p>\n

The 53-pitch outing is expected to be the only one Skenes has for Pittsburgh before he joins the U.S. for the World Baseball Classic. He allowed one hit and one run while facing 12 batters. He is going into his third season with the Pirates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWinning gold is the biggest thing,\u201d said Skenes, who was then asked if U.S. success in the just-completed Winter Olympics provides more motivation. \u201cYeah, men\u2019s hockey<\/a>, women\u2019s hockey, all the other golds that we won in the Olympics. We\u2019re America, we\u2019ve got to assert our dominance over everybody else. That\u2019s what we do. … It’s going to be fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skenes threw 27 pitches for strikes against the Braves, along with four other pitches initially called strikes by home plate umpire Chris Segal that Braves hitters challenged through the automated ball-strike system \u2014 the so-called robot umpires<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, that\u2019s how it is. I\u2019ve just got to adjust,” Skenes said. \u201cI think it will even out over the course of the season, but ask me in June.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three of those challenges came on consecutive batters in the first inning.<\/p>\n

Matt Olson challenged an 82.3 mph curveball that was called a strike, and had a smile on his face as replay showed indeed that the 1-1 pitch was only about one-tenth of an inch off the plate. He went on to draw a walk.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the season gets rolling, that\u2019s probably not the pitch that you\u2019re going to be challenging, but you\u2019ve got to feel it out a bit,\u201d Olson said. \u201cI figured, whatever. It was a backdoor sweeper that I felt kind of held up a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jurickson Profar then challenged a 98.3 mph fastball for a strike on the first pitch he faced, and it was overturned to a 1-0 count before he also walked. Austin Riley sought a replay when a 99 mph pitch on an 0-2 count was called a strike, but was above the zone, though on the next pitch he struck out swinging on a 98.5 mph fastball just below that.<\/p>\n

In the Braves second, Ronald Acu\u00f1a asked for a review and got a ball on a 97.6 mph fastball off the plate that had been called a strike.<\/p>\n

While the overturned strike thrown to Riley was the fastest of the day by Skenes, his fastball was consistently in the upper-90s throughout his outing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Paul Skenes watches a workout during spring training Saturday in Bradenton, Fla. Associated Press NORTH…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,9331,9323,9318,9338,9344,9347,9322,9326,9324,1242,9325,9330,9321,9343,9337,9320,9341,9329,9319,9332,1358,9345,4,9335,169,6423,3838,9336,10,776,64,4297,7502,9327,9340,9339,9328,9346,9334,9333,9342],"class_list":["post-593717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-baseball","tag-bruin","tag-butler","tag-butler-eagle","tag-cabot","tag-callery","tag-cherry-valley","tag-community-news","tag-connoquenessing","tag-cranberry","tag-crime","tag-east-butler","tag-eau-claire","tag-education-news","tag-evans-city","tag-fairview","tag-government-news","tag-harmony","tag-harrisville","tag-high-school-sports-news","tag-karns-city","tag-local-news","tag-mars","tag-mlb","tag-mount-chesnut","tag-news","tag-obituaries","tag-pennsylvania","tag-petrolia","tag-pirates","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-pittsburghpirates","tag-political-news","tag-portersville","tag-sarver","tag-saxonburg","tag-slippery-rock","tag-valencia","tag-west-liberty","tag-west-sunbury","tag-zelienople"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}