When Wes Johnson is asked about Paul Skenes — especially, the pinpoint control this season at LSU and his ceiling in the big leagues — the response is usually the same.

“I can’t give you a short answer on that,” he said.

Not that Skenes, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ No. 1 draft choice who last week became a pro with a record $9.2 million signing bonus, is a complicated guy. He’s just a good athlete who has not allowed his natural ability to go to waste.

After a few minutes chatting with Johnson, who was Skenes’ pitching coach at LSU and now is head coach at Georgia, it’s clear that the 6-foot-6 right-hander has not taken the easy road to success.

What about the most amazing statistic of all: Skenes handing out only 20 walks in 19 starts and 122⅔ innings?

“There’s no short answer there,” Johnson said. “We worked on something that we call flow.

“You’re trying to get the optimal hip and shoulder separation and time up that hip and shoulder separation. We worked on that a lot. The guys who get it usually have elite command, and he got it pretty quickly.”

Johnson admitted that Skenes is a “really good athlete,” which is the organic way to success.

“But you don’t get this kind of stuff without hard work,” Johnson said. “He had to put in the work, and he did.”

When Skenes arrived at LSU last year after transferring from the Air Force Academy, the two men went right to work.

“The first thing we started with was his off-speed,” Johnson said. “We needed to get his slider tighter, and we did and it became a sweeper. I split his grip on the slider. We spread his fingers a little bit and gave him a split grip.

“He already had a good changeup, but because we were trying to get his lower half to move a little different, we knew it was going to speed up his arm. So we really had to just work on getting command and movement of the changeup consistent.”

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Skenes was a willing student because at El Toro (Calif.) High School — where he, incidentally, had a 4.76 GPA — he was a changeup pitcher.

“There were times in the fall when I pitched in high school, I wasn’t allowed to throw a slider,” he said. “With our high school coach, that’s just how he ran the program, which I’m super grateful for because it made me develop feel for the changeup.”

Pirates general manager Ben Cherington credits Johnson and Skenes for the pitcher’s meteoric rise to collegiate stardom.

“He had a good foundation of a delivery before that,” Cherington said, “but there were some important adjustments he made in the fall and over the winter, some of that with LSU and with Wes Johnson, and some of that on his own over the winter. That really unleashed the power that was already in there but took his stuff from good to next level in the spring.”

Pirates pitching coach Oscar Marin said Skenes’ efforts are products of his ability and willingness to adjust.

“Man, there aren’t too many guys who can move from one side of the rubber to another with a lefty and a righty, depending on who he’s facing,” Marin said. “That takes elite body control. For him to buy into something like that and be able to do it, the repertoire, the way he moves his body, I think that came into play when he went to LSU.”

With college behind him, Skenes’ next challenge is finding his way to the majors and, perhaps, to the top of the Pirates’ starting rotation.

What is his professional ceiling?

“I can’t give you a short answer on that, but I’ll try,” Johnson said. “He never really sees failure. If he gets to the big leagues and pitches start to get hit, his mindset is, ‘OK, I just have to come back and regroup and change the way I’m doing things.’ Maybe change the shape of a pitch, change where that pitch is being located.

“With that being said, I think it puts his ceiling pretty high unless something happens and he loses that mental awareness that he has right now. I don’t think that he will.

“It’s so hard to predict, and I don’t want the pressure and hype to be so high.”

But Johnson seems sure of one fact about his former pupil.

“I’ll say this: He has the ability to be a 1 or a 2 in this league (in the starting rotation). There may only be five to seven No. 1s, elite, elite pitchers. He has the ceiling to work into that 1 or 2 role.”

Johnson speaks from experience at both levels. He was the Minnesota Twins’ pitching coach for three seasons, part of a staff that included Pirates manager Derek Shelton in 2019.

Would it make sense for Skenes to get a taste of the big leagues in September?

“He would learn a lot,” Johnson said. “I think, personally, it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to put him late in September. Just the way his mind works.

“If he gets hit, he’s the kind of guy who’s going to take the offseason and try to be ready for whatever he was lacking in those two starts to be good and be ready to roll next year.

“He needs to get built back up, get his feet in there. Give him a start or two in Double-A, a start or two in Triple-A and put him up there and let’s see what happens. He’s going to take the results, and he’s going to leave out of there with a really good plan on what he needs to do to be ready to pitch in the big leagues.

“Until you’re there, you don’t know what your plan is.”

During LSU’s national championship season, Skenes asked Johnson about the majors.

“Even though Paul was having a phenomenal year, we would get done and he would say, ‘OK, how would that have played at the next level?’ He was constantly trying to not only work on his game to help us win, but also with the mindset this is what’s going on. There’s always a next level.”

Before embarking on his future, he was willing to pitch on three days’ rest if it meant helping his team win a championship.

Skenes threw 120 pitches in eight innings of LSU’s 2-0, 11-inning victory against Wake Forest that moved the Tigers into the best-of-three final series against Florida. He struck out nine, walked one and allowed only two hits.

Would he have pitched in the decisive Game 3, if he was needed to nail down a victory?

“He said if that game’s close, ‘I’m going to be ready,’ ” Johnson said. “He started getting himself ready, just in case.”

The plan was he would throw only 25 pitches if the score was close in the ninth inning. As it turned out, LSU won 18-4.

“I didn’t want him doing it at all,” Johnson said. “He’s a big, old boy. He was ready to wrestle somebody to get in that game.”

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