Paul Skenes puts mismanaged Pirates on notice: 'There's urgency to it'

Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes is already one of the best young starting pitchers Major League Baseball has ever seen, and he is very likely going to add a National League Cy Young award to his already-growing list of accomplishments in the next couple of months. As great as he is, the Pirates have mostly wasted his dominance and not only failed to make the playoffs for the 10th consecutive season, but they are going to win fewer games in 2025 than they did in 2024. 

Skenes already seems tired of that and issued a big challenge to the team on Friday before the team opened its final homestand of the season. 

Paul Skenes does not want this to be a wasted season

While most outside viewers — and most Pirates fans themselves — have viewed this as a wasted season for Skenes' tenure with the team, he said there is only one thing that would make it waste, and that is if they do not learn what they need to do and actually follow through with fixing it. 

From the Associated Press on Friday:

“This is a wasted year if we don’t learn what we need to do and we don’t know why we didn’t go out there and do what we wanted to do,” Skenes said Friday. “If those things happen, then it’s a wasted year, in my opinion. I don’t think that’s happening. I think — individually, as a team and as an organization — we know the adjustments we need to make. Now we’ve just got to do them.”

There are a couple of ways to interpret that outlook. 

The first is that he is speaking to the players on the roster and their need to be better. There are a handful of players on the roster who failed to meet expectations this season, including veteran outfielder Bryan Reynolds and their most talented position player, Oneil Cruz. 

They need to be better if the Pirates are going to have a chance. But it may have been more geared toward the front office and ownership. 

“There’s room to get better in this locker room,” Skenes continued. “We just need to do it. I’m sure we’ll get some pieces and do all that, but my mind right now is ‘What can we do within the locker room to get better, now and for next year?’ There’s urgency to it, and we need to understand that and act on it.”

The players in the locker room are what they are, and what they are is not very good as a group. You can't just wish inferior players to become better. They simply need more good players. That is where things fall on management and the front office. 

Management knew they had Skenes and a strong pitching staff coming into this season, and they knew they had to improve the offense. But instead of making meaningful moves to do that, they only traded for Spencer Horwitz and signed Tommy Pham in free agency. They also entered the season with, again, one of baseball's smallest payrolls. None of that should be viewed as acceptable. 

The Pirates likely only have a short period of time with Skenes on their roster before he prices himself out of their budget, so it is imperative they win as quickly as possible. That is going to require some big changes from the way they do business as an organization. Their best player has put them on notice.