Report: Pirates Won’t Trade Paul Skenes

The Right Move

Hanging on to Skenes is the right move – or non-move – for the Pirates. Every self-respecting baseball fan is familiar with Skenes’s accomplishments. In 2024, he was 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA and 0.947 WHIP in 23 starts. He struck out an astounding 170 of the 514 batters he faced. He started the All-Star Game for the National League and was named the league’s Rookie of the Year. This season, he’s been a victim of poor support and sports a 3-5 record despite a 2.44 ERA and 0.941 WHIP. His strikeouts-per-nine-innings ratio is down from 11.5 to 8.9 as he’s become more conscious of pitching to contact, keeping his pitch counts down, and staying in games longer.

The Case for the Pirates Keeping Skenes

The notion that the Pirates should trade Skenes because they’ll “never build a team around him” is pure nonsense. No team will ever be competitive with that kind of thinking. I believe that the Pirates should keep him through the 2029 season, after which he becomes a free agent. Assuming Skenes remains healthy, the Pirates will have gotten six seasons from him by then. Today, players rarely stay with the same team for six years. The Pirates are unlikely to get six years from any players they obtain for Skenes. Furthermore, Skenes is a generational talent. It would be nearly impossible to get equal value in return for a generational talent.

Learning From History

Witness, for example, the Pirates’ trade of pitcher Gerrit Cole after the 2017 season, two years before Cole was to reach free agency. The notion that he would receive a contract out of the Pirates’ reach played into the decision to trade him. The “generational talent” tag may not apply to Cole, but he’s a pitcher who won 19 games for the 2015 Bucs. After the trade, he won two league ERA titles and a Cy Young Award. The Pirates traded Cole to the Houston Astros for third baseman Colin Moran, pitchers Joe Musgrove and Michael Feliz, and outfielder Jason Martin.

Moran was a mere placeholder until Ke’Bryan Hayes came up and took over third base. From 2018-2021 with Pittsburgh, Moran hit .269/.331/.419, 44 HR, and 211 RBI. He last played in the majors in 2022 and is currently out of baseball after spending 2024 in the Atlantic League. Musgrove was a Pirate from 2018-20, during which he was 18-26 with a 4.23 ERA and 1.205 WHIP on bad teams. He’s blossomed into a top-of-the-line pitcher since being traded to the San Diego Padres.

Hard-throwing Feliz spent four frustrating seasons with the Pirates, posting a 5.00 ERA while experiencing control issues. Feliz hasn’t pitched in the majors since 2022. Martin appeared in 27 games for the Pirates and was never more than a fifth-outfielder type. His last appearance in the majors was in 2021, and he, too, is out of baseball presently. And that, sports fans, was the “haul” for Cole. The Pirates got a collective 2.7 WAR from this group. It would have been far better for the Pirates to have had two more years of Cole than four years of this crew.

When Money Talks

Similarly, six years of Skenes will be better than whatever the Pirates can land in a trade for him. If he leaves when free agency and big dollars beckon, then he leaves.

If that happens, the Pirates will be labeled “cheap” for not keeping Skenes. However, he’ll command a nine- or 10-year contract worth a projected half-billion dollars. There are only around half a dozen teams that can entertain that type of contract. Furthermore, there’s risk involved in giving a pitcher a contract of that length and dollar figure. Today, over one-third of major league pitchers have had Tommy John surgery in their careers. Although they’re able to recover and resume pitching, the recovery means the pitcher will miss at least one, and perhaps two, seasons. It’s the kind of risk most teams can’t take.

Cole, for example, is missing this season due to Tommy John surgery. He’s still being paid $36 million. Justin Verlander missed the 2021 season after getting the surgery. He collected $33 million during that season. Musgrove also underwent the surgery before this season. He’ll receive $20 million while sitting out 2025. This kind of occurrence can cripple a small market team for years to come.

The Last Word

Whether the Pirates follow through and build a competitive team around Skenes is a separate matter and remains to be seen. Under general manager Ben Cherington, they’ve been poor at identifying and developing hitters. Then again, given Cherington’s performance in his six years, he may not be the one acquiring the hitters for very long.

The prevailing rumor around the internet that “Skenes can’t wait to get out of Pittsburgh” and the notion that he “deserves” a chance to be with a winning team are sheer nonsense. The Pirates didn’t pay Skenes a record $9.2 million bonus so he could spend a year in Pittsburgh deciding whether he likes it there or not. In any event, Skenes has made no public statements about wanting a trade. He’s on record as looking forward to the day when he and No. 1 prospect Bubba Chandler are teammates. The Pirates should keep Skenes at least through 2029. A starting rotation that includes Skenes, Chandler, Mitch Keller, and prospects Thomas Harrington and Hunter Barco could be the envy of all baseball. First, the Pirates have to find some hitters.