MLB desperate for Livvy Dunne following

Pittsburgh Pirates pitching sensation Paul Skenes finally made his MLB debut this weekend, striking out seven and hitting 100 mph a whopping 17 times. The 21-year-old lived up to the hype in a road win over Chicago, but the real star of the game may have been Skenes’ longtime girlfriend, LSU gymnast and NIL superstar Livvy Dunne.

As much as Dunne attracts attention wherever she goes, the Pirates and MLB, as well as baseball media, played up her appearance at PNC Park to an almost absurd degree.

When Skenes took the mound in the first inning, SportsNet Pittsburgh immediately cut to the stands, where Dunne and Skenes’ family was sitting with smiles.

“There’s the suite, and of course obviously that’s Livvy Dunne,” Pirates fans heard before Skenes ever threw a pitch.

On YouTube, MLB’s compilation of Skenes’ debut highlights featured that same cutaway to Dunne.

The MLB X account posted a video interview with Dunne, the only non-highlight post from Saturday on the account. The league posted the interview on Instagram as well.

On TikTok, the clip was captioned “Livvy Dunne is entering her MLB WAG era, meaning her “wives and girlfriends” era. It’s the same reductive descriptor that was used on Taylor Swift when she started popping up at Kansas City Chiefs games last fall, and isn’t exactly a compliment.

MLB’s TikTok clip featured a synth beat and a graphic that rad “Supportive Girlfriends >”. Rather than pumping up Dunne as an athlete or even an influencer, to baseball she is now simply Paul Skenes’ girlfriend.

During his postgame interview on SportsNet Pittsburgh, the broadcast cut to Dunne in the suite level at PNC Park as B-roll footage during an answer from Skenes about the game.

The postgame write-up from ESPN and the Associated Press featured a mention of Dunne in the sixth paragraph of a long story about his debut and the team’s comeback win.

Social media ate up Dunne’s appearance and her relationship with Skenes.

Bleacher Report, CBS and ESPN all posted about Dunne and her relationship with Skenes on Saturday across social media as well.

MLB commented on Dunne’s post about Skenes’ debut.

Dunne is among the biggest influencers in all of sports. The LSU national champion gymnast finished second in On3’s NIL rankings this past year , as her $3.9 million earnings ranked behind only Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders.

Dunne has 8 million followers on TikTok (almost 1 million more than MLB), 5.2 million followers on Instagram (more than six-times as many as the Pirates) and 2.2 million followers on Snapchat. Her post after Skenes’ debut already has nearly 350,000 likes.

It’s obvious that MLB would chase Dunne’s following and play up the relationship. Diehard Pirates fans might turn their noses up at all the attention taken away from their pitching prodigy, but storytelling and marketing are part of sports.

If anything, this just shows a level of hunger (or desperation) for mainstream attention around baseball. And much like NFL media wondered whether there was much overlap between Swifties and NFL diehards, it’s fair to wonder whether Dunne’s social media following transfers to baseball.

MLB is going to hope it does, but no business can manufacture energy and attention.

The post MLB is going all-in to make Livvy Dunne baseball’s Taylor Swift appeared first on Awful Announcing .