Paul Skenes starts his MLB career completely embarrassing the Cubs

The baseball world came to a relative halt on Saturday afternoon at approximately 4:05 p.m. ET as Pittsburgh Pirates top prospect and one of MLB's top prospects, right-handed pitcher Paul Skenes, made his major-league debut against the Chicago Cubs.

And for a guy who was making one of the most-hyped debuts we've seen in recent MLB history while also facing a talented Cubs lineup, it was always going to be difficult for him to live up to the hype.

At least through one inning of work, though, he absolutely did just that.

Paul Skenes nearly strikes out side in first MLB inning vs. Cubs

Though his first itch was a ball, he then locked in against Cubs leadoff man Mike Tauchman from the bum and threw five four-seam fastballs to strike him out. And yes, every heater eclipsed the 100 mph mark.

Skenes wasn't done there, though. Seiya Suzuki was next at the dish and looked completely blown away by the Pirates rookie. That was never more evident than the two sliders that Skenes hurled across the plate that has the Cubs outfielder just flailing.

That gave the Pirates youngster a chance to strike out the side, and he was close as he had a two-strike count on Cody Bellinger, who then worked a walk.

But it was no issue as Skenes gave up his first decently hard contact to clean-up hitter Christopher Morel -- it wasn't nearly hard enough, however, as it resulted in a flyout to center field to end the inning.

The most impressive parts of the action, though, were two incredible things that Skenes did for someone making his first MLB start. First, he worked extremely quickly, showing a ton of command of the moment, the game, and the mound to get this quick work done. More importantly, though, high-end big-league hitters were left looking quite bad against him.

Both Tauchman and Suzuki barely made a competitive swing in either of their at-bats. Even Bellinger as he got into a two-strike hole was flailing at the ball trying to get a read on the Pirates debutante. He obviously held off to work the walk, but then fooled Morel at least somewhat enough to not get his splinker put into the bleachers.

It was tremendous work and Skenes undeniably looked like everyone has been saying: He should've been called up a while before now, because he's more than ready for this action on this stage.