BATON ROUGE - Paul Skenes has been named the 2023 D1 Baseball Player of the Year after a historic season, helping to lead LSU to the national championship.

Skenes finished second in the nation among qualified pitchers in ERA (1.69) and first in strikeouts (209), breaking fellow LSU great Ben McDonald’s 34-year-old SEC strikeout record and becoming the first Division I pitcher to reach the 200-strikeout plateau since Long Beach State’s Jered Weaver in 2004. Remarkably, he struck out more than 10 times as many batters as he walked, while holding opponents to a .165 batting average in 122.2 innings. He also led the nation in WHIP (0.75) while finishing second in victories (13) behind Wake Forest’s Rhett Lowder, with whom he traded zeroes in the College World Series showdown last week. Skenes struck out nine in that contest to break McDonald’s record.

“I’ve gotten to talk with Ben a lot, and he called a lot of our games,” Skenes said afterward. “Obviously had a really good career at LSU and in the major leagues. It’s cool. And it’s cool to leave a legacy."