How to Bet Paul Skenes in Pirates Matchup vs. Giants (Expect Plenty of Strikeouts)

Paul Skenes flashed some absolutely tremendous talent in his first MLB start, but the final stat line was inconsistent and relatively unimpressive. However, against the very same Cubs team, he put on a can't-miss show in his second outing- Skenes walked just one batter and didn't allow a hit or run while striking out 11 over six magnificent innings of work.

Next, back in Pittsburgh, Skenes will square off against the San Francisco Giants. By OPS, the offense is just about the same as Chicago's, and the San Francisco hitters strike out at a very similar rate as well.

One difference is that compared to the Cubs, who feature high-end lefties in the leadoff and #3 lineup spots, the Giants are fairly right-handed. LaMonte Wade Jr. is an exception, but he actually has a slight reverse-split, and while Mike Yastrzemski does certainly prefer to see righties, he's having a pretty poor year at the dish overall.

So the main question for us is how to create value. Betting the game result itself probably is not the way to go- as we saw in Skenes' first start, he can't do everything, and the Pittsburgh bullpen is still one of the least trustworthy in baseball.

The first five innings line could be one to watch; Skenes can't make the Pirates hit, but he can do everything in his power to blank San Francisco through that amount of time.

After cleaning up some bits of sloppiness from his debut, Skenes should have absolutely no issue going at least five innings per game going forward, especially as the Pirates showed a willingness to ramp him up to 100 pitches in his next outing.

It's also worth noting that the Giants are expected to throw fellow youngster Mason Black, who similarly, is three starts into his big league career- it's just not going quite as well as it is for Skenes. Pittsburgh has strung together a few strong offensive performances in recent weeks, and Black should afford them the opportunity to do the same.

The other way to approach a Skenes start is, of course, the strikeouts prop. He got past the standard number in his first start, and annihilated it in his second.

There are two questions to ask with any prop like this one, the first of which is how Skenes should fare against San Francisco's batters. We've already touched on that one; he should absolutely shred, as he did against Chicago. In any given at-bat, he has a great chance to record the K.

The second question is just how many batters he'll face, or to put it in simple terms, how deep into the game he's getting. On one hand, he's not likely to be less efficient than he was in his last start- 100 pitches for six innings with only one baserunner allowed is a very high number. On the other hand, he's not likely to be more efficient in the sense that most innings were 1-2-3.

It's also absolutely vital that we've now seen Skenes throw 100 pitches in an MLB game. After some herculean efforts in college, we knew he had it in him, but hadn't seen it as a pro.

Now that we know Pittsburgh is empowered to let him get a bit deeper into games, we can really unload bankroll on his strikeout props, as it's hard to imagine hitters fully catching up to the one-two-three punch of his unique "splinker" pitch, elite four-seam fastball, and very well-developed slider anytime soon.

It's an understatement to say that Skenes isn't all that likely to replicate his no-hit 11-strikeout showing this time out, but the number of 7.5 is one he should be very capable of eclipsing.

With first five inning lines not yet ready to go, hit the over on that number at -112 odds.

Best Bet: Paul Skenes over 7.5 strikeouts (-112)

Odds via DraftKings Sportsbook.

Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.