Joe Starkey: No matter what Pirates say, Paul Skenes trade talk will never go away

Joe Starkey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on May 22, 2025

Published in Baseball

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PITTSBURGH — The tweet Jon Heyman of the New York Post posted a few days ago certainly was not meant as comic relief, but here's hoping it provided at least a little bit of that for rightfully embittered Pirates fans:

"Pirates source: Paul Skenes is not getting traded. '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."

Remain determined? When did they become determined? Their big free-agent position-player signings were Tommy Pham and Adam Frazier. Their big trade deadline acquisition last year was Bryan De La Cruz.

The Pirates' profound failure to "build around Skenes" is manifested most graphically in an offense that might make some horrible history Friday night against the Milwaukee Brewers. The Pirates entered Thursday having scored four runs or fewer (mostly fewer) in 26 straight games. No team in big league history had done that for 27 straight games, and they've been playing baseball for quite some time now.

Good for the Pirates, I guess, that they have made it clear they won't trade Skenes in his first full major league season, even if nobody expected them to. Smart money says there is no way they will trade him of their own volition for at least another year or two.

But what if Skenes pipes up?

What if he grows tired of being paraded around in the Pirates' clown car and decides enough is enough? What if he were to ask for a trade at some point in the next few years? That would change the equation.

I don't expect that to happen, either, mind you, but the topic of whether the Pirates will at some point trade their generational superstar is a perfectly sensible one — and no matter what the Pirates tell anybody, it's never going away.

It's here to stay, for these reasons:

— 1 — Money. Assuming Skenes stays healthy, he could command upwards of half-a-billion dollars as a free agent in the winter of 2029, and everybody knows the Pirates are not going to pay him. The clock is ticking. Skenes will become progressively more expensive when he becomes arbitration eligible in 2027.

— 2 — Precedent. The last time the Pirates had a No. 1 overall pick of a stud pitcher, they traded him with two years left on his contract. Gerrit Cole, then 26, was headed for a big raise in arbitration in January 2018 when the Pirates dealt him to the Houston Astros for Joe Musgrove, Michael Feliz, Colin Moran and Jason Martin.

Said then-GM Neal Huntington: "Acquiring these four quality young players ... is an important step for us as we work toward bringing playoff baseball back to our fans."

Narrator: Playoff baseball hasn't been brought back to their fans.

— 3 — Ben Cherington's ineptitude. The Pirates have underachieved so badly in rebuilding their farm system under Cherington that people will naturally wonder if trading Skenes at the very height of his powers is the best and maybe only way to restock it.

Somehow, despite tanking for four years, having prime drafting position for five Cherington drafts and acquiring bushels of prospects, the Pirates were ranked just 14th in MLB.com's latest farm system rankings. That defies belief.

How are the Los Angeles Dodgers, for example, 10 spots ahead of the Pirates? How is every team in the NL Central except the Cardinals ahead of the Pirates? How is there not a big bat or three at Triple-A knocking at the door?

What has Cherington been doing?

The Pirates will again choose in the top 10 this June in the draft (sixth overall) and could be headed for a top-five pick next year. If they handed out championship trophies for earning top-10 picks, this team would be a dynasty.

Cherington made the right choice, for sure, in selecting Skenes over Dylan Crews two years ago. But as was said in this space months ago, and repeated often, Skenes' presence is both a blessing and a curse.

A blessing because he's incredible, a curse because his incredible presence underscores the organization's failure to capitalize on that presence — though I'm sure the Pirates remained "determined" to do so.