That’s the thing about baseball that sets it apart from other sports. There is no salary cap or salary floor. This means you can pay your roster as much or as little money as the owners want. For example, the Marlins have spent $15 million on their active roster, while there are teams that have spent over $200 million.
What I’m saying is that the Pittsburgh Pirates are a team notorious for being cheapskates. They don’t pursue big trades or big-name free agents, and that’s caused them to underperform for a long time.
They received the first pick in the 2023 MLB Draft because they’ve been so bad the last few years, and watched a generational pitcher fall into their laps. LSU’s Paul Skenes was a perfect blend of this generation’s flamethrowers and last generation’s command specialists.
And it hasn’t even been a year since he started his career in the Major Leagues, and it’s already clear that Pittsburgh is going to waste the best years of his career.
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The Pirates have set Skenes up for failure time and time again, starting with the lineups they’ve put behind him. Skenes was given lineups with multiple hitters under .200 in the first few starts of his major league career. Essentially, the Pirates handed him the ball as a rookie and told him to put the team on his shoulders and get in the game himself.
The relief pitching behind him has also fallen apart.
The Pirates’ last seven losses have all been attributed to a relief pitcher. Paul Skenes was the last starting pitcher to “lose” a game for the Pirates – a game in which he allowed two runs in 8.1 innings.
— Noah Hiles (@_NoahHiles) 8 August 2024
Let’s do a quick calculation here.
Skenes has made 14 career starts, including one that went into overtime, before Saturday’s game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, giving him 127 total innings as a starting pitcher. Of those innings, Skenes has thrown 86 and allowed 19 earned runs, for an ERA under 2.00.
In the 41 innings the relievers have covered behind him, they’ve allowed a total of 26 runs. That’s good for a combined bullpen ERA of over 5.50. Combine that with a lineup that barely produces anything behind him, and you’ve got what appears to be Skenes against the rest of the world. Are you serious, Pirates?
Somehow, before Saturday, the Pirates had won nine of Skene’s 14 starts, largely because he was so dominant.
However, he lost one game in which he allowed two runs in 8.1 innings. In games in which he allowed one or fewer earned runs in 6+ innings, he received a no-decision a total of five times in 14 starts.
Unless the Pirates front office fundamentally changes its business practices, they won’t be aggressively signing Skenes as an additional backup. And that’s a shame, because this team has such a talented young core and even more talent coming up through the farm system.
