During this summer’s Olympics, I watched Katie Ledecky absolutely demolish her competition in the women’s 1500 freestyle final, breaking her own Olympic record and winning the gold medal by over 10 seconds. Ledecky has been so dominant in the event throughout her career that the race was over before it began and everyone knew it. And yet, I was absolutely captivated. Knowing what the outcome would be didn’t take away from the joy of watching one of the most dominant athletes of all time excel at her craft.
But, since the race was over 15 minutes long, my mind wandered, as it often does, to baseball. I realized that baseball will never make me feel the way I did watching Ledecky that night, because excellence is never a sure thing in baseball, no matter how talented a player is. Even the best hitters reach base in fewer than half of their plate appearances, and even the best pitchers give up a couple of runs for every nine innings they pitch.
While the other major American sports aren’t quite as predictable as the women’s 1500 free, it’s not unreasonable for fans to expect excellence from stars nearly every time they step on the rink, court or field. Connor McDavid, Nikola Jokić and Patrick Mahomes will rarely ever have bad games.
Baseball is different. In Shohei Ohtani’s American League MVP-winning 2023 season, he went hitless in 38 of the 135 games he played, and only managed a single in 23 games. That’s more than 45% of games where he couldn’t manage more than one total base, and this is one of the greatest players of his generation in an MVP-winning year.
This is baseball’s greatest challenge. People watch sports for their superstars because watching greatness is fun. Knowing that a great athlete will do great things on any given night is comforting. Meanwhile baseball, like a rebellious teenager, angrily rejects any attempt to predict it. Not everyone enjoys this irrationality, and, for this reason, MLB has always struggled to market its star players.
Pitchers offer MLB a great opportunity. Great starting pitchers are about the closest thing baseball has to a quarterback. The pitcher has a monopoly over the baseball, and good pitching always beats good hitting. If fans clamor for guaranteed excellence, the natural response is for MLB to focus on marketing superstar pitchers. And this season, they’ve done just that with Pittsburgh Pirates rookie Paul Skenes.
If you’ve followed baseball at all this year, you’re probably tired of hearing about this kid. But get used to it, because Skenes is the perfect poster boy for MLB. He has it all: former first overall pick, blistering fastball, devastating off-speed pitches and a social media-famous girlfriend. His electric mix of pitches gives him the ability to strike out anyone, so he can be entertaining even on an off-day.
Skenes is exactly what MLB needed — a player so entertaining that people will watch a pedestrian Pirates team just to see him pitch, one who will be exciting in nearly every start. Starting pitchers are the only players in baseball who can take over a game, and that’s what today’s sports fan lives for. Even if he’s not Katie Ledecky, MLB has hit the jackpot with Skenes, and if the league is smart, they’ll keep focusing on pitchers.
