PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh Pirates star pitcher Paul Skenes is one of the best players in baseball, with teams looking at him potentially joining them in the future.
Skenes has had a solid season, despite a 3-5 record in 10 starts, a 2.44 ERA over 62.2 innings pitched, 62 strikeouts to 16 walks and an opposing batting average of .190, but some people see the Pirates unable to support their star.
The Pirates have lost seven of the 10 games Skenes has started in, despite only allowing 17 earned runs. The offense has scored 31 runs in Skenes' starts, which also includes 10 runs in a victory over the Washington Nationals at PNC Park on April 14, averaging around three runs per game.
Skenes had his best start of the season against the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park on May 18. He allowed just one run, three hits and a walk, while tying his season-high of nine strikeouts over eight innings, for his first ever complete game in the 1-0 defeat.
The Pirates currently sit with a 17-33 record, the fourth worst record in the MLB, 13.0 games behind the Chicago Cubs in first place of the National League Central Division and 11.5 games behind the San Diego Padres in the final NL Wild Card spot.
Fans of baseball and national media members have argued that the Pirates don't have what it takes to give Skenes a winning team and that they should trade him.
Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported that the his Pirates source told him that the franchise will not trade Skenes and that they want to build around him.
"Paul Skenes is not getting traded," Heyman wrote in his tweet. “'No chance, no way, no how,' is the way I heard it. While there’s a bit of logic to such a scenario, superstars just aren’t traded by anyone with 1 year service time and the Pirates remain determined to build around Skenes."
The Pirates have four more years of club control with Skenes, who is pre-arbitration for this season and 2026, where he makes around MLB minimum ($760,000 in 2025), and then has three more years of arbitration before hitting free agency.
Skenes had a sensational 2024 season, where he won NL Rookie of the Year, finished third in NL Cy Young Award voting and earned All-MLB Team honors. He also started the All-Star game for the NL, the first rookie to do so in almost 30 years.
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