I’m working on a Top 100 update right now, and I’m struggling to make a case for anyone above Pirates RHP Paul Skenes. Sure, Jackson Holliday is a safer bet given the reality of every pitcher who’s ever thrown this hard getting hurt, but Skenes is such a unicorn, I’m inclined to stop treating him like a regular human baseball player. Part of it is the struggle to keep my brain functioning exclusively in the fantasy baseball realm, where of course it makes sense to pick the hitters over the pitchers 99.9 percent of the time. I just think this feels like that 0.1 percent of the time, and it’s hard to imagine any real baseball teams would prefer another prospect to Skenes. A guy like him can carry you through the playoffs, if you happen to make the playoffs, especially if he’s paired with another dynamite young arm like Jared Jones. I ranked Skenes 12th in my Top 25 Fantasy Prospects: Opening Day 2024, and I feel pretty foolish about that today. I had some worries about his health given how long it had been since we’d seen him pitch and how he finished 2023, but that’s a distant memory now.