The Opener: Skenes, Kent, Walls

Rays third baseman Junior Caminero slugged his 35th home run last night, moving into a tie atop the league leaderboard with three other players. It’s the latest in the season that a Tampa Bay player has led the league in home runs (h/t Tampa Bay Times/Elias Sports Bureau). The previous mark was Jose Canseco in late June of the 1999 season. 1. Skenes pulled after five innings Pirates right-hander Paul Skenes only allowed one earned run on Tuesday against the Marlins, a step forward from his recent outings, but there were concerning signs in the start. The reigning NL Cy Young winner averaged a season-low 95.7 mph on his four-seamer. He was pulled after just 65 pitches. Skenes’ fastball velocity has been down all season, but he was still working deep into games and keeping runs off the board for the first few months of the year. He scuffled to a 6.25 ERA in July and has now gone only five innings in both starts this month. 2. Kent to make debut Nationals left-hander Jackson Kent is expected to be added to the big-league club on Wednesday. He’ll get the ball against a red-hot Cubs squad that took the first game of the series last night. Washington selected Kent with a fourth-round pick in the 2024 draft. He’s put together a 3.72 ERA across 20 starts between Double-A and Triple-A this year. The 23-year-old is a consensus top-10 prospect in the organization. The Nationals continue to get younger in the rotation, with Foster Griffin and Zack Littell recently replaced by Andrew Alvarez and Jake Irvin. Kent is likely to take the spot of Miles Mikolas, leaving Trevor Williams as the only veteran on the staff. 3. Walls ends homer drought … twice Rays shortstop Taylor Walls is known for his glove, not his bat. The light-hitting infielder had gone nearly 100 games without homering heading into Tuesday’s game. He snapped the streak with a two-run blast off Mason Barnett in the fourth inning. The switch-hitting Walls then turned around to the right side and clubbed a solo homer off Brady Basso in his next at-bat. Despite only having 24 career home runs in six seasons, it was the second time Walls had homered from both sides of the plate. The other instance came in April 2023 against the Reds. One of his home runs that game came off current teammate Casey Legumina. Photo courtesy of Rhona Wise, Imagn Images View Comments (6)