From Buttermaker to All-Star: Paul Skenes finds his meteoric rise ‘pretty dang cool’

Sports are all about tradition, and one of the beloved traditions at El Toro High is the Halloween baseball game.

The players get their intrasquad game in, but in costume. Five years ago, the Halloween theme was “The Bad News Bears,” the classic 1976 movie about a youth league team sponsored by Chico’s Bail Bonds and managed by a down-on-his-luck former minor leaguer who cleans pools and is an alcoholic.

His name was Morris Buttermaker. He brought his alcohol into the dugout — this was half a century ago — in a paper bag.

Five years ago, for that Halloween game, Paul Skenes was Buttermaker, paper bag in hand.

“He called a timeout so he could walk to go see the pitcher, and he was stumbling,” El Toro coach Mike Gonzales said. “He was the full character that day.

“Paul is a character. That’s why his teammates love him so much. He doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s willing to laugh at himself and put himself out there, which I think is really cool, being one of the best players on the team.”

Today, Skenes is one of the best players in the world.

The Pittsburgh Pirates rookie is the starting pitcher for the National League in Tuesday’s All-Star Game, one year out of college and two months into his major league career.

“Pretty dang cool,” said Skenes, 22.

The youngest NL starting pitcher in All-Star history? The Dodgers’ Fernando Valenzuela, who was 20 when he started in 1981, the year of Fernandomania.

There is a mania around Skenes too, even if it has no official name. There has not been so great a mania about a young pitcher since Stephen Strasburg in 2010.

Skenes is the pitcher everyone wants to see, so much so that NL manager Torey Lovullo called it a “no-brainer” to select him as the NL starter.

“Paul is everything right about this game,” Lovullo said.

He’s young, he’s humble, and he signed up for the Air Force Academy and played two years there before transferring to Louisiana State. He throws 100 mph, and his girlfriend Livvy Dunne is a bigger celebrity than he is.

On Monday, a reporter suggested Skenes was baseball’s equivalent of Victor Wembanyama, the San Antonio Spurs’ 20-year-old rookie sensation, the generational talent attracting new audiences to an old sport.

“I don’t know that I agree or disagree with that,” Skenes said. “I don’t watch the NBA at all. I know who he is, but I don’t know a whole lot about him.”

No one much knew about Skenes’ golden arm for most of his high school career. He played third base as a sophomore and catcher as a junior, and after “about four” appearances as a closer, Gonzales gave him his first start in the Southern Section playoffs.

Skenes threw seven shutout innings — and then, to Gonzales’ credit, the coach removed him rather than risk his arm. In his senior year, Skenes was a starter, but the Covid-19 pandemic limited his season to four starts.

Paul Skenes, while in his El Toro High School uniform, smiles in March 2020.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

“He was what you see today,” Gonzales said, “just instead of 92, he throws 102.”

In 23 professional starts, Skenes has never lost. The last team to beat him: the University of Arkansas, 417 days ago.

He is 6-0 with a 1.90 ERA, including a Bob Gibson-like 1.14 ERA over his last six starts.

Among pitchers with at least 50 innings, Skenes ranks second in ERA (to Reynaldo Lopez of the Atlanta Braves), second in average fastball velocity (99.1 mph, trailing only the Angels’ Jose Soriano at 99.2 mph), and second in strikeout percentage (34.9%, trailing only Dodgers trade target Garrett Crochet of the Chicago White Sox at 35.2%).

The key to hitting him, maybe: be a fellow El Toro alum. Nolan Arenado and Matt Chapman are a combined three for six (.500) against Skenes. The rest of the league is batting .194 against him.

He would be the next big thing, except he is already here.

On Monday, Major League Baseball featured a picture of Skenes and Dunne, together, on its X account.

Dunne, the LSU gymnast and influencer, is no stranger to social media. She has 5 million followers on Instagram. The only MLB player with more: Shohei Ohtani, with 8 million.

The MLB player with the second-most followers: Mike Trout, with 2 million. Skenes, something of a phenomenon at the moment, has 500,000.

“That’s what I tell him: ‘Livvy really put you on the map, congratulations,’ ” Gonzales said, laughing. “It’s kind of like the Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift thing.”