WATCH: Olivia Dunne 'counting down seconds' to reunite with long-distance boyfriend Paul Skenes
Olivia Dunne and Paul Skenes are one of the most popular young sporting couples in the US, and both are amid pivotal years. Dunne and the LSU Tigers gymnastics team are in the semifinals and hoping to win the national championship, while Skenes is playing in the MiLB and looking to break into the MLB.
Given that the two have hectic schedules in different states, time together can be tricky to plan. Dunne addressed this on TikTok, sharing a clip with her 7.9 million followers on Tuesday. Her post described her feelings about seeing her boyfriend soon, and was captioned:
"Counting down the seconds😁 #boyfriend #longdistance #relationship #baseball."
Skenes is playing for the Triple-A Indianapolis Indians and has been very impressive thus far.
Paul Skenes' impressive performances with the Indians
It's early days, but a lot of people are paying attention to how Paul Skenes gets on in Indianapolis, and the 2023 No. 1 pick has dominated in his opening two games.
Skenes has recorded an ERA of 0.00 in 6 innings pitched, striking out 11 and allowing only 1 hit and 1 walk. Indians pitching coach, Drew Benes, had nothing but praise for Skenes last week, telling reporters:
“He is incredible in every way. The way he’s wired, the way he goes about his work, the focus, obviously the ability. It’s all there. Just walking through this stage with him, it’ll be a lot of fun.”
This has a lot of people wondering how long it will be until Skenes makes it to the MLB, but the Pittsburgh Pirates are playing it safe with their talented prospect. Pirates manager Ben Cherington spoke to MLB Network Radio on Sunday, and said that there is currently no timeline for Skenes to play in the majors:
“He's going to start to build pitch count as we get deeper into April, confident that he'll handle that really well and we'll see where that leads us. No timeline. He's really important to us, and we think that he certainly has the ability to help us potentially this year.”
If Paul Skenes continues to produce at the same clip, it will be interesting to see how long until the Pirates call him up. With Pittsburgh 9-3 and atop their division, fans are hoping they can compete for their first NL Central pennant.