Sports drafts are a wonderful thing. A team coming off a dismal season has a chance at drafting a really talented young player who could be a franchise centerpiece for a decade or more.
At least that is the basic thought.
Star players tend to stick with their franchise in the NBA (unless you are a mercurial player such as LeBron James and want to take your talents elsewhere for a bit). In the NFL, players have a wandering eye once their rookie deals are up (five years for first-round picks).
We know MLB is different in the fact that draftees head to the minor leagues for at least a season or three before finally being promoted. Sometimes a rare occasion pops up and a player goes directly from college to the majors, but it is very unusual (save for a situation like the 2020 pandemic).
Players producing at an elite level as an MLB rookie and repeating that is even more rare.
But we seem to have one of those players right now in Paul Skenes. A moribund Pittsburgh Pirates franchise won the right to pick No. 1 overall in the 2023 draft as a result of going 62-100 in 2022, finishing with the third-worst record in MLB. Thanks to the debut of the draft lottery, the Pirates won a very fortuitous prize.
Skenes elevated himself to the No. 1 pick through a stellar season at LSU and the Pirates had their future ace. After getting his feet wet in pro ball in 2023, it was only a matter of time before the Pirates would be forced to bring Skenes to the big-league club. That happened May 11, 2024, when Skenes debuted at home against the Chicago Cubs and told the world he would be trouble from that moment on.
Not much was expected of the Pirates in 2024, but Skenes’ arrival and the emergence of left-hander Jared Jones, who made his MLB debut by making the Opening Day roster last year, set the stage for what should have been an offseason where the Pirates made shrewd moves to build around their two young starting pitchers.
Skenes did not disappoint during his rookie season, making 23 starts and posting an amazing 1.96 ERA and 0.95 WHIP in 133 innings, striking out 170 against 32 walks, compiling an 11-3 record and 5.9 bWAR. It earned the 22-year-old the NL Rookie of the Year award, a third-place finish in NL Cy Young voting and 19th place in NL MVP balloting.
It has led to Skenes making the cover of “MLB: The Show” for this season and one of the most marketable players in baseball.
So what did the Pirates do this offseason to make sure they take advantage of the Skenes years?
Not a whole lot.
Signing a handful of journeymen to one-year contracts and acquiring a youngish first baseman with question marks isn’t exactly moving the needle coming off a 76-86 record in 2024. Maybe Pirates general manager Ben Cherington didn’t feel the needle needed to be moved much. After all, Skenes will get about another nine starts by being on the Opening Day roster. Jones will get about the same number of additional starts in 2025 after missing two months with a strained right lat.
That could result in another eight wins or so. It would also take the Pirates’ pitching staff from bottom third to top third in MLB. The Pirates’ offense wasn’t remotely good in 2024, ranking 27th of 30 team with a .672 OPS and ranking 24th in runs. Moving Oneil Cruz from shortstop to center field could unlock more of his offensive potential, but otherwise, not a whole lot to get excited about on a team that is hitting Andrew McCutchen (.739 OPS in 2024) hitting cleanup in his age-38 season.
So what does all of this say about the Pirates being able to keep around Skenes? 2025 is the second of six years of control the Pirates are guaranteed to have Skenes. Cost control by the team is maximized in the first three years with minimum salaries, but Skenes will start to earn better money in 2027, the first of three arbitration years. (Barring, of course, any changes to that process in the upcoming collective-bargaining negotiations.) Over at The Athletic, Tim Britton explored what an extension for Skenes would look like. While it is a worthy endeavor, it is also fool’s errand.
The Pirates are not signing Skenes to any sort of an extension. An offer might be made, but Skenes would be foolish to sign anything that gives up any of his free-agent years.
Skenes is one of those players who will break models as long as he is healthy. He enters 2025 as the NL Cy Young favorite. With starting pitching salaries having been suppressed in arbitration over the last decade, Skenes has a chance to reset that market for those who follow him. The highest salary for a third time through arbitration is Jacob deGrom’s $17 million in 2019. Meanwhile, the Pirates will try and keep that salary low to appease other teams and their owners across the league.
Skenes’ value will shoot up if he does what every thinks he will do. His bWAR this year could approach Dwight Gooden’s 12.2 in 1985 with New York Mets and Pedro Martinez’s 11.7 in 2000 with the Boston Red Sox.
Pittsburgh and its frugal ownership won’t pay the big bucks that Skenes and his agents at ISE Baseball will demand past his three arbitration years. The only hope is the Pirates are able to lock in cost certainty over the next five years.
But will the Pirates contend with Skenes on their roster?
They could be on the fringe of the NL wild-card chase with their current roster. Since the postseason expanded to 12 teams in 2022, all of the NL wild-card teams have come outside of the Pirates’ division, the NL Central. The win totals of the third NL wild card has been 87, 84 and 89. A full season of Skenes and Jones would seem to put the Pirates in the category of finishing 81-81, with a possibility of slightly surpassing that. But the winner of the NL Central the last three seasons has had 92, 92 and 93 wins.
However, the offense remains a huge question entering 2025. Who else besides Cruz do opposing pitchers really need to focus on? Right fielder Bryan Reynolds, who slashed .275/.344/.447 with 24 homers and 88 RBIs possibly, with newly signed left fielder Tommy Pham (.248/.305/.368, 9, 39) hitting leadoff ahead of those two. Maybe someone else steps forward. Catcher Joey Bart, a reclamation project, or second baseman Nick Gonzales could fit that role.
Why didn’t the Pirates go all-in for another bat? Between first base and left field, there were plenty of candidates to be upgrades over what they currently have.
Skenes is watching, too. Remarkably, he is already the Pirates’ player rep for the union, so Skenes is certainly aware of what is going on with his team as well as issues coming up. When he takes the mound on Opening Day, all he will need to do is look around the diamond and ask himself: Is this the type of team I’m going to be surrounded by for the next five years?
Probably. Which is why Skenes will be the subject of trade rumors during his arbitration years as the Pirates continue to swim in mediocrity.