You, the savvy baseball fan, are almost certainly wise to imagine what Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes will look like someday wearing some other team's uniform. If you are a fan of one of six particular franchises, you might even sensibly dare to imagine what Skenes might look like wearing your team's uniform. The odds are heavily against Skenes playing the back half of his career in Pittsburgh.
For one thing, top-end starters tend to change teams, and tend especially to flow away from broke-dick bozo outfits like the one in Pittsburgh and in the direction of, you know, serious professional organizations. For another, the Pirates in particular don't generally hold onto their real-deal pitchers. The last pitcher to make it to 150 starts with Pittsburgh was Paul Maholm, a guy I almost remember, and who last toed the rubber for the Pirates in 2011. Maholm is one of only two pitchers to cross that threshold for the franchise since 1993. By way of comparison, the Colorado Rockies, whose pitchers are sandbagged by the worst possible environmental conditions, have had seven 150-start fellas over that span. I am not here to say that the Rockies are doing anything right, because they super-duper are not—for all I know the team is in its present horrific state as divine punishment for the crime of having given 206 starts to Aaron Cook—only to point out that the last starter to go eight seasons in Pittsburgh was born before the invention of the compact disc. Relatedly, Mitch Keller, currently in his seventh season in Pittsburgh and climbing toward 150 career starts, has a couple seasons left on an extension signed in 2024, and is about to be traded as hell.
It is also worth noting that Keller's extension, which is good for $77 million in guaranteed salary, is the most expensive the Pirates have ever given to a pitcher. Meanwhile, the most expensive active contract for a pitcher is the one Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed over the winter with the Dodgers, and is worth $325 million. Gerritt Cole's deal with the Yankees is worth $324 million over nine seasons. Jacob deGrom is earning $37 million a season in Texas; Corbin Burnes is getting $35 million a season from the Diamondbacks. Dash altogether any hope of vile cheapskate Pirates owner Bob Nutting offering even a fraction of Skenes's true market worth in any contract offer, ever. If Skenes makes it to 150 starts in Pittsburgh, so help me I will chug a bottle of French's mustard. If he ever signs an extension with the Pirates, by everything holy I will tattoo the team's logo onto my body.
I am thinking about this stuff today because, first of all, trade season is upon us and Skenes's name is circulating. Jeff Passan of ESPN went on Pat McAfee's show recently and insisted that a "smart" team in Pittsburgh's position (heh) would and should be open to trading the young ace. John Smoltz told For The Win in May that it would be "more reasonable than not" for the Pirates to deal Skenes, since the organization is otherwise unserious about building a real contender. The noise is noisy enough that Pittsburgh's general manager, Ben Cherington, has had to issue big embarrassing public declarations on the matter, insisting that a Skenes trade is "not part of the conversation at all."
"Let's play better baseball, and that's going to lead to winning more games," said Cherington, back on May 22, with the Pirates sitting at 17–34 and having recently fired their manager. "Then, let's wake up and see where that takes us when we get to July." You hate to throw a huge sopping blanket over this, uh, optimism, but do not bet your home on the Pirates waking up in July in some dramatically improved position. They have the second-worst record in the National League, ahead of only those goddamned Rockies; they're 16.5 games back in their division and 11.5 games out of the NL wild card. They have scored precisely one more run than the worst offense in the majors (do you even have to ask?). They stink super hard. I don't even know who you would have to be to imagine anything could happen over the next seven weeks to turn the Pirates from deadline sellers to deadline buyers. For all intents and purposes the Pirates exist as an organization to sell at the annual trade deadline.
I am also thinking about Skenes today because, man, even as the ace of Team Loser he has had some unbelievably rotten luck. Tuesday he allowed just four baserunners through eight innings of work on 99 pitches, struck out eight batters, allowed just one run to cross the plate, and lost.
This was the fifth time already this season that Skenes has taken a loss while allowing three runs or fewer. In his last four starts, he has allowed 14 hits and four walks, has surrendered just three extra-base hits, has recorded 32 strikeouts, has gone eight innings twice, and has lowered his ERA on the season to 2.05, and over that stretch of incredible domination he's gone 1–2. It's disgusting!
"It's baseball. Unfortunately, it's baseball," explained Skenes, after Tuesday's deeply unfair loss. "I don't know, I don't watch the offense a ton, so in terms of process and sticking to our plan and all of that, I'm not the right guy to ask. It just goes back to controlling what we can control. It is what it is." I wouldn't watch the offense a ton either! In point of fact, I don't. Those guys stink. In 13 starts the season, Skenes has gotten more than four runs of support from his sorry hitters just three times. He leads all qualified National League pitchers today in WHIP and hits allowed per nine innings, and is tops in bWAR, and he leads all major-league pitchers in innings, and his record is 4–6. Skenes has a very solid shot at winding up the first Cy Young-winning starter in history to finish the season with a losing record.
Even if the Pirates had honest designs on making Skenes a Pirate for good, you have to imagine he would sooner take up sulfur mining than commit his prime years to this bullcrap operation.
