Paul Skenes

On the record · career milestone this season

500 career strikeouts — Fri, Jun 26 · night game vs. Cincinnati Reds The scorecard → · The write-up →

The card rack

FlagshipPaul Skenes #H165 · 2024 Topps Holiday · 579 recent sales 7N ▲0.1%

His flagship is his rookie — one card, one market.

$3.13Raw$18.50PSA 9$49.98PSA 10$65.00BGS 10PSA 10 · 46 nights

Live on eBay now · asking, not sold · as of 2026-08-27 · paid links

$1.99Ungraded$1.99Ungraded$2.00Ungraded

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Paid link — as an eBay Partner, FVR earns from qualifying purchases. · Flagship = his most-traded card (the market’s reference); the rookie = the top card of his first card year. As of August 27, 2026 · trend is FVR's own nightly archive · prices via SportsCardsPro · what these terms mean

Scout’s note

Fullerton, California, 6'6" and 260, the 2023 first-rounder — Skenes has 557 career strikeouts in 81 games, this year's 171 rank seventh, and WAR sits at 3.7. The engine is deliberate: no board flag from a stuff model not yet outcome-validated, even for a season this loud; the ERA-FIP luck gap did clear the bar for a regression call. A 3.95 ERA across 139 innings is a step back from his rookie standard. The page is here because the player matters; the science isn't done.

Current signals

The read: Skenes is in the Index ungraded, on purpose: our stuff model is stability-tested but not outcome-validated, so no big-league arm gets a board flag from it — not even one of the best seasons in the sport. (Calls are another matter: the ERA-FIP luck gap did clear the bar, and we file arm regression calls by hand from it.) The page is here because the player matters; the board grade waits for the science.

WAR (season · MLB calc)

4.1

A market fact, not an engine read: what a club decided about him, on the season before this one. Figures from Cot’s, as of August 21, 2026.

2026 salary

$1.08Mest

Tax hit

$1.08M

Service time

2 yr 0 d

Options left

3 / 3

Cash and the tax hit are two different rulebooks and are never subtracted from one another — see the payroll board for his club, Pittsburgh Pirates.

A second set of books

The same contract, read by MLB Spreadsheets (Ethan Hullihen), as of August 20, 2026. We keep two sources on this because one source cannot check itself.

Tax AAV

$1.08M

Guaranteed

$1.08M

Term

1 yr

His class

Pre-Arb

The tax AAV above is his number under the CBA’s own rulebook, not the average we work out from Cot’s total. On a contract with deferred money the two come apart on purpose — and neither is subtracted from the other.

Collect Paul Skenes

If the signal is right, the cardboard usually finds out later. Current listings:

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Not financial advice. We take positions only after publication — never before. Misses stay on the record.

The Bureau on Paul Skenes

The scouting press, in their own words