Paul Skenes finished the 2026 season with more questions than answers: a 3.82 ERA, a 10-11 record, and a fastball averaging 96.8 mph — still elite, but 1.4 mph slower than 2025. His response was a plane ticket to Japan. Not a vacation. A study trip.
In October, Skenes and his girlfriend Olivia Dunne toured three U.S. military bases — Misawa, Yokosuka, and Yokota — between October 22 and 24 for youth baseball clinics and time with military families. It was his second consecutive USO tour. After that came the baseball education portion: Tokyo, Kyoto, and two of the best pitchers in the game.
The Ohtani Method: Sleep as a Competitive Edge
First stop was Nihonbashi Nishikawa, a bedding store in Tokyo — specifically, the supplier of Shohei Ohtani’s custom mattress, a model that runs around $3,000 and sits at the center of the two-time MVP’s recovery routine. Skenes wasn’t there to buy one on impulse. He was there to understand the logic behind the investment.
The numbers behind Ohtani’s consistency are hard to argue with: .985 OPS, 139 home runs, and 313 RBI over the last three seasons. Skenes, who was 15 years old when he watched Ohtani make his pitching debut at Angel Stadium in April 2018, doesn’t see the sleep obsession as a quirk — he sees it as part of the formula that keeps Ohtani performing at that level year after year.
Yamamoto: The Pitcher Skenes Calls the Most Ideal in the League
The second name Skenes kept coming back to was Yoshinobu Yamamoto — and he got specific. According to comments reported by Dodgers Nation, Skenes called Yamamoto his most ideal pitcher in the majors and broke down exactly how the right-hander uses his fastball to set up his curveball and splitter: how the velocity variation and release-point manipulation put hitters in doubt mode before the out-pitch even arrives.
The admiration is backed by hard data. Yamamoto closed 2026 with a 2.53 ERA across 185 innings and 185 strikeouts. Over three MLB seasons, he carries a 2.61 ERA in 76 starts — two of the four best seasons ever posted by a Japanese starter in big league history.
The contrast with Skenes’s own arc is impossible to ignore. He won Rookie of the Year in 2024 with a 1.97 ERA. He won the Cy Young in 2025. Then came 2026: the ERA nearly doubled, the fastball dipped. What Skenes took away from studying Yamamoto wasn’t just the pitch mix — it was the idea that how you throw matters as much as what you throw. Every pitch has a reason.
Where Skenes Still Stands Among MLB’s Best
The velocity dip is real, but Skenes remains an elite arm by contact quality. His 2026 Statcast profile makes that clear:
- 32 starts, 174.1 innings
- ERA: 3.82 · WHIP: 1.12
- 200 strikeouts, 49 walks (28.1 K%, 85th percentile)
- xERA: 3.3 (82nd percentile — the ERA his contact quality deserved)
- Fastball: 96.8 mph avg, 2,171 rpm spin rate
- Whiff rate: 28.2% of swings against him
- Exit velocity allowed: 88 mph · Barrel rate: 7.3%
- Batting average against: .227
- Walk rate (BB%): 76th percentile · xwOBA against: 82nd percentile
Skenes told ESPN he has no intention of carrying 2026 into next year. Flying to Japan to study the two best Japanese pitchers in the game — one for how he recovers, one for how he thinks on the mound — says a lot about how seriously he’s taking the reset heading into 2027.
