Andy Pages Spent His Offseason Facing "Paul Skenes" And It Turned Him Into a Different Hitter

Picture this: October 2025. The Dodgers have just won their second consecutive World Series. Andy Pages, a two-time champion at age 24, should be celebrating. Instead he is sitting somewhere in Los Angeles doing math he does not like. Four hits in 51 at-bats. Eleven strikeouts. The math is not changing, so instead Pages decided he had to.

Pages's best off-season friend was 8 feet tall and weighed in at 1,200 pounds named Paul Skenes. Skenes, the Pittsburgh Pirates ace who plays no role in this story and an enormous role in it simultaneously, in what may be the single most interesting offseason training story in baseball in 2026. Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register wrote about it first in April: Andy Pages spent every single day of his offseason and spring training facing a digital replica of Paul Skenes.

Let that sit for a moment.

Before we get to the results, and the results are outstanding, it helps to understand what Pages was actually doing in that batting cage every morning.

The Machine

The Trajekt Arc is what happens when a Canadian robotics company decides baseball players deserve better than the previous versions of pitching machines. Trajekt Sports built a pitching machine that weighs as much as a compact car, stands 8 feet tall, moves up and down and side to side to match any pitcher's release slot, and projects that pitcher's video delivery onto a screen while firing the actual pitch from that exact arm angle with that exact spin rate.

It is, as Driveline Baseball put it, the most realistic pitching machine available today.

The machine did not exist until 2021. By 2022, seven teams had one. By 2024, the number had climbed to 19 teams and three clubs in Japan. There are now approximately 45 machines operating across baseball at a cost of roughly $15,000 to $20,000 a month on a three-year lease. That is a significant check, which tells you something about how quickly the industry has decided Trajekt is worth it.

The names using it are not exactly fringe players. Aaron Judge used it during spring training when an abdominal injury limited his live at-bats. Shohei Ohtani, whose relationship with Trajekt is uniquely surreal, has used it to see his own pitches from a hitter's perspective. Dodgers president Andrew Friedman has publicly floated the idea of Ohtani facing himself in the machine, which is either the most advanced preparation in baseball history or a philosophical crisis waiting to happen. Brendan Donovan of the Cardinals uses it before games in-season, describing the mindset as getting in against the machine at the very nastiest version of an upcoming pitcher so that the real thing feels manageable by first pitch. The Miami Marlins have integrated it so thoroughly into their pre-game preparation that visiting hitters have taken reps against a holographic version of Marlins starters in the visiting batting cage hours before games. The opponent is literally helping their opponents prepare to hit. Baseball in 2026 is strange and interesting.

Pages and Skenes

Now back to Andy Pages and the man whose pitches ruined his winter.

Pages did not use Trajekt to prepare specifically for Skenes. He used Skenes because Skenes' arsenal is the most honest stress test available. Triple-digit velocity. A splinker that drops off a table. A sweeper that works on a different plane than almost anything else in baseball. The movement profiles on Skenes' pitches expose every timing flaw, every hitch in a swing path, every tendency to start a swing based on location guesses rather than pitch identification. If you can stay honest against that arsenal for 30 to 60 minutes a day, every day, through an entire offseason, you are doing something real.

"I focused a lot on the pitches that Paul Skenes was throwing, just because his ball moves so much," Pages told Plunkett. "I think I spent every single day in the offseason and during Spring Training working off the Trajekt machine, maybe like 30 minutes to an hour. Working on it, seeing more pitches, and I think that has obviously helped being able to identify better pitches through the work that I put in."

Here is the part that makes this more than an offseason story. The work did not stop when the season started. Pages now begins every game day by stepping into the batting cage and facing Skenes on the Trajekt before transitioning to that evening's actual starting pitcher. He uses the most difficult pitch mix available to calibrate his timing and discipline, then sharpens his preparation against the man he will actually face. It is a layered daily system built on the hardest possible warm-up, and it did not exist five years ago.

The Numbers

You want to know if it worked. Here is the answer.

Pages enters June as the MLB RBI leader with 51. He is slashing .291 with 13 home runs. His hard-hit rate sits at 46.3 percent, up from 37.2 percent in 2025. His average exit velocity has climbed to 89.9 mph with a 10.0 percent barrel rate. His wOBA is .374 against an xwOBA of .351, a modest gap that says a player whose surface results are running slightly ahead of his contact quality but whose contact quality is excellent on its own terms. His chase rate has dropped meaningfully. He is not the same hitter who went 4 for 51 in October.

Pages is 25 years old, two years into his major league career, and he found a way to address a specific mechanical problem using a specific piece of technology in a targeted way that produced specific, measurable results. That is not the standard offseason story. The standard offseason story is "I worked on my swing in the gym and feel great about where things are headed." This is something different and the numbers confirm it.

The Bigger Picture

There is a real argument that Trajekt represents the first meaningful technological equalizer hitters have had in a generation. Trajekt has existed since 2021 and is already in two-thirds of major league clubhouses. Andy Pages is one of the earlier and cleaner data points for what happens when hitters use that infrastructure to address a specific, identified problem rather than taking general batting practice and hoping.

The 2025 postseason version of Pages was overmatched and tentative. The 2026 version leads the league in RBI and steps into his cage every morning to face the best stuff in baseball before anyone else is even thinking about that night's lineup. Skenes, for his part, had nothing to do with any of this. He was just the most difficult test available.

He passed.

Questions About Andy Pages And The Traject Machine

How did Andy Pages train against Paul Skenes in the offseason?

Pages used a Trajekt Arc pitching robot programmed to replicate Paul Skenes' full arsenal every day through the offseason and spring training, spending 30 to 60 minutes per session to force honest pitch recognition and timing decisions against the nastiest movement profiles in baseball.

What are Andy Pages' 2026 stats through early June?

Pages is slashing .291 with 13 home runs and 51 RBI, leading MLB in RBI, with a hard-hit rate of 46.3 percent, average exit velocity of 89.9 mph, a 10.0 percent barrel rate, and a .374 wOBA backed by a .351 xwOBA that confirms the contact quality is real.

Why did Andy Pages choose Paul Skenes' pitch mix for offseason training?

Skenes' triple-digit velocity, splinker, and sweeper expose every timing flaw and swing-path weakness available, making his arsenal the most honest stress test Pages could find and the ideal daily calibration tool regardless of who he actually faces that night.

Does Andy Pages still use the Trajekt machine during the season?

Yes, Pages starts every game day on the Trajekt machine facing Skenes first to calibrate his timing and pitch recognition, then switches to that evening's scheduled starter, turning the offseason regimen into a daily in-season preparation system.

How much has Andy Pages' hard-hit rate improved in 2026?

Pages' hard-hit rate climbed from 37.2 percent in 2025 to 46.3 percent in 2026, one of the largest year-over-year gains among qualifying hitters, accompanied by a barrel rate of 10.0 percent and average exit velocity of 89.9 mph.

What is the Trajekt Arc and how widely is it used in MLB?

The Trajekt Arc is a 1,200-pound pitching robot that replicates any MLB pitcher's velocity, spin rate, movement profile, and release point using Statcast tracking data and projected video, and it is now used by approximately 20 major league teams on machines that cost $15,000 to $20,000 per month.

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This story was originally published June 6, 2026 at 12:22 PM.