NEW YORK — It has been 366 days since Paul Skenes emerged from the PNC Park home dugout beneath a gray blanket of Pittsburgh sky to make his major-league debut.
That afternoon, in front of a packed crowd, the highly anticipated phenom was not crisp. Perhaps overly amped, Skenes struggled with his fastball command, coughing up three runs over just four innings against the Chicago Cubs. But the performance was a glimpse, reason for a franchise to dream about a brighter future. If the Pirates could somehow conjure up enough offensive talent to assemble around Skenes, whether via their own farm system or via free agency, a sunnier day felt achievable. And so, it felt like a new day of Pirates baseball was dawning.
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In the year since, Skenes has held up his end of the bargain. Still just 22 years old, he is already one of the game’s best starting pitchers. Across 31 starts since his debut clunker, the 2023 No. 1 overall pick has punched out 216 hitters in 183 2/3 innings while posting a 2.06 ERA, MLB’s lowest over that span. He started the 2024 All-Star Game, won NL Rookie of the Year and finished third in NL Cy Young voting.
Given his age, his track record, his 4.5 years of team control remaining and the possibility that he could get even better as he continues acclimating to the big-league game, Skenes is easily the most valuable starting pitcher in the sport.
On Monday against the Mets, Skenes’ command waxed and waned, but the moose-sized man made big pitches when he needed to. By the time Pittsburgh went to its bullpen, Skenes had surrendered a single run across six well-pitched frames.
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The Pirates, unsurprisingly, still lost. It marked the fourth time in nine Skenes starts this season that Pittsburgh lost a game in which its star hurler allowed two or fewer runs.
Asked whether a lack of run support can alter a pitcher’s approach, new skipper Don Kelly offered an optimistic perspective.
“You know, I think the challenge in baseball is staying within yourself and not putting pressure on yourself, in regards to the situation,” he said. “And I hope that our pitchers don’t do that, that they stay within themselves, attack the hitters the way that they would at any time.”
As much as Skenes and other Pirates pitchers can try to separate church and state, it’s much easier in thought than in practice — especially when the end result is often another notch in the loss column. Because this Pirates lineup, ranked dead last in runs scored, is a punchless, underwhelming husk. Besides the currently injured and offensively flawed Oneil Cruz, the offense has no superstar talent. There are a handful of “nice pieces” amongst Pittsburgh’s position-player group, but nice pieces don’t win games or divisions or championships. Difference-makers do, and on Monday at Citi Field, none of the difference-makers, besides Skenes, was wearing black and gold.
The Pirates are now 14-28, the third-worst mark in baseball. On May 12, they are already 10.5 games adrift of a playoff spot, and last week, the Buccos fired manager Derek Shelton, who had helmed the club since 2020. A promising, encouraging rotation, with more talent on the way, has been weighed down by a disastrous offense. On the hitting side, Pittsburgh’s is a roster caught in-between, mired in a half-measure, with one foot in the now and one in the future. Meanwhile, a chasm is opening beneath them.
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Amidst all the losing, an uncomfortable question has come to the fore, one that grabs headlines (including this one), fosters fodder and makes for good beer-side babble: Should the Pirates trade Paul Skenes?
The argument for dealing Skenes is as follows.
1. If there is not enough offensive impact on the current roster to expect the 2025 Pirates to come roaring back into the playoff picture …
2. And there aren’t any paradigm-shifting offensive prospects headed to PNC Park in the next handful of seasons … (Termarr Johnson, the fourth overall pick in 2022, is tracking like a solid every-day player but was left off a number of Top 100 prospect lists. Pittsburgh’s most promising youngster is a 19-year-old outfielder named Konnor Griffin, whose MLB ETA is 2028 or 2029) …
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3. And it’s unlikely this ownership group will increase free-agent spending in the coming winter or the next …
4. Then it’s unrealistic to expect the Skenes Era Pirates to be anything other than a what-coulda-been waiting to happen.
The Pirates, the thinking goes, should then do what the Nationals did with Juan Soto: Flip Skenes to a contender for a squadron of six or seven prospects and hope that group develops into the next core. Considering how volatile pitchers are, Skenes’ value might never be higher than what it is right now. Better to strike while the iron is hot than wait for the other shoe to drop.
Compelling though that might be, all the chatter about Pittsburgh dealing Skenes is just chatter. Trading the team’s ace away so early in his career would be a soul-crushing maneuver, one that could further alienate Pirates fans for a generation. The Nats were able to swap Soto, in part, because of the golden shadow cast by their 2019 World Series title. Pittsburgh, obviously, has no such hook on which to hang its hat.
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Furthermore, Skenes is a moneymaker, a big-time draw. He puts butts in seats, sells jerseys and attracts eyeballs. That’s music to the ears of team owner Bob Nutting, who has earned a reputation around the industry as something of a scrooge. Yes, the Pirates eventually dealt away another No. 1 overall pick in Gerrit Cole before he reached free agency, but that came five years into his Pittsburgh tenure. It’s far, far too early for GM Ben Cherington to even consider doing the same with Skenes.
And most importantly, the club’s likeliest path to future contention still runs through a Skenes-led, pitching-and-defense ballclub that scores just enough runs. Between current big leaguers Skenes, Mitch Keller, Jared Jones and Bailey Falter and prospects Bubba Chandler, Thomas Harrington, Braxton Ashcraft and Hunter Barco, there is sufficient arm talent to dream on.
So while 29 other fan bases might see Pittsburgh’s strife as their own potential gain, that thinking is unfounded, or, at the very least, premature at this juncture. Skenes might not end up being a Pirate for life, but he’s a Pirate for the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, all he can do is continue to ignore the noise – and his own offense.
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