How MLB Star Pitcher Paul Skenes Was Photographed for a Video Game Cover
Major League Baseball offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a photo shoot for the upcoming video game MLB The Show, where cover star Paul Skenes fired 100-mile-per-hour pitches toward a photographer.
The footage shows Skene in a photo studio standing in front of a white backdrop as the photographer, lying prone on the floor, captures shots of Skene launching balls at velocity — with some of the studio staff getting hit.
“Imagine being a photographer and having to stand behind a Paul Skenes pitch,” writes Major League Baseball (MLB) on its Instagram page.
The photographer and his equipment seemed to escape unscathed from the Skenes’s rapid pitches but some production staff weren’t so lucky.
“Whoever got hit deserves a raise me thinks,” writes one commenter. “Why didn’t they get a catcher for him? (Serious questions),” adds Jenna Patricia.
Toward the end of the video, some of the photographer’s images are shown on a screen and the brave lensman captured the ball hurtling toward him with Skenes still in his pitch position. It’s a pretty cool shot.
The front cover for MLB The Show was revealed this week. As well as Skenes, it also features Gunnar Henderson and Elly De La Cruz. All the photos look as if they were taken during live games but a selection of the studio photos did appear on the game’s Instagram feed.
The photo shoot is reminiscent of Trinity Rodman’s back in 2023 when the United States women’s soccer player blasted a ball straight down the photographer’s lens.
Had Skenes’s pitch found the photographer’s glass then it may well have broken it. In 2023, a photographer at a baseball game had his Sony 400mm f/2.8 lens valued at $12,000 destroyed after a foul ball smashed into the glass.
