Paul Skenes in the spotlight, starting the All-Star Game after just 11 major league games

ARLINGTON, Texas – Paul Skenes looked like a summer intern reporting for duty, wearing a light gray suit, white shirt, and cream tie, teenage acne on his face and wonder in his voice.

In a stadium filled with six dozen All-Stars, the 22-year-old Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher, with 11 major league appearances under his belt, was the center of attention.

“Very cool,” he said.

Skenes is hot, like 102 degrees outside air-conditioned Globe Life Field, and will start Tuesday’s National League All-Star Game. He will play the fewest major league games of any player in the showcase’s 91-year history, a new flavor that baseball likes to savor. His splinker, a hybrid that sinks like a splitter with the speed of a sinker, makes hitters murmur.

“He’s very intriguing to me and I’m honored to sit next to him,” said NL coach Torey Lovullo of Arizona.

Although he wasn’t too perturbed by the adulation, Skenes wasn’t ripe for the hype.

“It’s an honor, but I’ve been a starter for 11 years,” he said. “I hope there is still a lot more time to be able to play this game.”

This time last year, he was the No. 1 pick in the amateur draft, weeks after celebrating a NCAA title with LSU. Now he’s 6-0 with a 1.90 ERA, striking out 89 and walking 13 in 66 1/3 innings.

Cleveland’s Steven Kwan will see him for the first time on Tuesday. He found out in a group message from his parents that he was the American League’s leading hitter, who will start Baltimore’s Corbin Burnes.

“Sometimes they just post things that aren’t even correct,” Kwan said. “I was kind of surprised and thought: is this really true?”

Kwan leads the major leagues with a .352 average and was excited to face Skenes’ arsenal of fastballs, splitters, sliders, curveballs and changeups. Skenes’ 99.1 mph average velocity on his four-seam fastball leads the major leagues among those with at least 1,000 pitches.

“It’s a generational talent,” Kwan said. “The guy has all the pressure on him and people probably want to see him fail because of that, but he continues to excel, continues to succeed. He says the right things. It seems like his teammates really like him.”

At an imposing 6-foot-10, Skenes has already produced two hitless outings of six or more innings, prevented from attempting a no-hitter by the pitching limits of the analytics era. He reached the major leagues with a famous girlfriend, the gymnast/influencer Livvy Dunne.

The mustache on Skenes’ boyish face gives him an old-time baseball look, like a daguerreotype of some 19th-century founding father. However, he is a creature of 21st century throwing practices, which include warm-ups with footballs, weighted PlyoCare balls and water bags.

Skenes grew up in Orange County and attended El Toro High School, also known for Nolan Arenado, Matt Chapman and Austin Romine. He enrolled at the Air Force Academy and was a catcher and pitcher. LSU coach Jay Johnson convinced him to transfer after the 2022 season and he became a full-time pitcher last year.

“They stopped putting me in BP groups,” Skenes said. “I wanted to keep hitting as long as I could, but I thought the upside of the mound was much better than the upside, so I gave up.”

His splinker, listed by Statcast as a game-changer, averages 94.1 mph — 1.1 mph faster than anyone else with 1,000 pitches and well above the MLB average of 86.5 mph. Before Skenes, the field was primarily known for being used by Minnesota’s Jhoan Duran.

“I had a sinker that I was throwing last year at LSU and I kind of started playing around with it between the end of the college season and the time when I was going to report to the complex after the draft,” Skenes said. “I just figured out a different cue for it, started throwing it and got command over it and the last part of it is just throwing it to the hitters and seeing how they react to it.”

He didn’t change his grip, just his release while playing ball.

“I kind of discovered it on a random play,” he said.

Skenes has marked the next generation of pitchers since he lit up with a rendition of Charles Wesley Godwin’s “Cue Country Roads” in his debut May 11 at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park.

Skenes threw 75 100 mph pitches; José Soriano, of the Los Angeles Angels, is the second starter with 36.

After Kwan, Skenes will face Baltimore’s Gunnar Henderson and the New York Yankees’ Juan Soto, and then possibly AL home run leader Aaron Judge.

“It’s a 100-mile-per-hour four-seamer and I look at it as a 95-, 96-mile-per-hour two-seam fastball,” said Pete Alonso of the Mets, who singled and doubled splinkers on July 5 before catching a ball quick 99.4 for strike three “So for me it’s just being ready to hit 100 and then everything else looks semi-hittable if it’s above the plate.”

After moving from rookie to Double-A last summer and starting this year at Triple-A Rochester, Skenes’ goal for 2024 was to reach the major leagues. He has already caught the attention of the sport’s elite.

“I didn’t necessarily think I’d be here,” he said.

Teoscar Hernandez of the Los Angeles Dodgers won the Home Run Derbydefeating Bobby Witt Jr. of Kansas City in the final round.

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