Trading Paul Skenes Would be a Gigantic Mistake

5-13-25 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X

The Pirates 2025 season has been a truly worst case scenario story. And when worst case scenario stories play out, people imagine doomsday preparations.

There has been a groundswell of suggestions that the Pirates should trade Paul Skenes, and right now.

Listen, no matter when the Pirates deal Paul Skenes, they won’t win the deal. You don’t win when you trade a player like that.

Lets start by talking about the different kinds of people who suggest it.

The National Baseball Media
Their motivation, well, much like you they see baseball as broken, they just don’t see it broken in the same way you do. See, to them, great talents deserve to be on great teams, not just eventually like what actually takes place in the game, but always. Teams like the Pirates, they don’t deserve him you see? And even if they did what was requested and “spent a little more” it wouldn’t be enough. To them, teams like the Dodgers or Mets or Yankees, they’re put together the way they are on the backs of their superior intellect. See, if Bob Nutting were to spend 387 Million next year, the market would surely grow to the point where it could support at least that for years to come. Reality isn’t on their side, but when you decide common sense solutions to actually try to fix the game are insane, you kinda have to accept insane things as provable truth, and it’s extra easy because almost nobody will ever try it, except for the Padres of course, and listen to how they get spoken of by this same group, like they’re just a cute kid wearing a cop uniform pretending they have actual authority. If they really wanted to try they would have signed Ohtani, ya dig?

Normal Pirates Fans
This is typically from two classes of Pirates fans, if they’re not trolls who I won’t bother with in this piece. First are the fans who don’t really understand team control, how it escalates, how long it lasts, you know what I mean, these are the people that get mad when you suggest trading a guy like Isiah Kiner-Falefa cause he’s hitting .300 n’at, but they simply have no understanding he becomes a free agent next year.
Next up are the ones who genuinely feel this team is so poorly constructed, so far from any kind of meaningful contention that they either might as well, or they see it as a one stop shop to acquire everything that ails the team.

Now, there are others of course, I’m not trying to create buckets for every eventuality of Paul Skenes must be traded person, just most of them, like I don’t care about the Supermodel community that surely wants Paul to move to NYC for Livvy’s career.

Let me try my best to explain why it’s a bad idea right now and I’m going to start with my very best argument.

The only reason we think this team is close enough to fix, is that Paul Skenes is on the team

Let’s say for the sake of argument, the Pirates didn’t draft Paul Skenes. In our little world, they’ve either picked Crews, or someone else, honestly doesn’t matter too terribly much for this conversation.

Point is, this team doesn’t have Paul Skenes. Instead you’re like 24/7 comping Jared Jones to Spencer Strider, and you’re absolutely drooling over the upcoming prospect pitchers. If they picked Crews, you probably have a new CF so maybe the outfield feels solidified.

You’d probably still feel you have a lot of the same holes though, just instead of outfield you now don’t have this freak of an ace. Again though, you do have that pitching coming, and lord knows you better get some of it across the finish line.

Now, the one thing I can’t control is your ability to truly imagine this feeling. Can you even allow yourself to simply Thanos Paul Skenes out of this franchise? It’s hard to do.

Look, we’d probably still be mad about the state of the team. We’d probably still have wanted Shelton fired, Cherington too. I know for sure we’d still want Nutting gone.

Would we think we should be making a big deal? If so, would we have to add front line starting pitcher? Think on it, Jones is hurt, Bubba might be ready, Keller is what Keller was, Heaney and Falter are still around, you have Carmen going.

You sure you would think the prospects are going to be enough?

To me, no matter how hard I try, I can’t see this team being sure fire ready to win without him. Simply put, I think he’s the reason this urgency shouldn’t just be lip service.

I don’t believe an appropriate package exists

At this point, you’d be selling 5 years of Paul Skenes, 2 more dirt cheap then 3 years of progressively more expensive arbitration years. The obvious assumption is that whomever would acquire him would want to extend him, but we’ve already seen that not be the case twice for Juan Soto.

The Pirates would have to ask for in my mind minimally 2 MLB players, and I don’t mean borderline. Let’s go with the Mariners because they have like 7 or 9 players on top 100 lists depending on who you look at. I’d start with Cal Raleigh and I’d make Seattle eat half his 105 million dollar contract that lasts through 2030.
Then I’d demand George Kirby their young starter in arbitration. Now here’s my problem, they’ve got a lot of top 100 players, but not many who are close to MLB. If I’m making moves like this, I need to have what I acquire effect my MLB club within the timeframe of the return. This is where the deal falls apart for me. Maybe Kirby and Raleigh are enough of right now for you to pull the trigger, to me, I’m not sure I’ve fixed enough of the holes I knew I had, primarily because I had to use some of my capital to replace Skenes himself in the rotation.

I can try other teams. Dodgers could be a better fit, but the principle remains, it’s a very difficult match to find equivalent value. And it all stems from trying to replace 5 years of Skenes.

There are better ways to add

First things first, they really could spend more next year. They could solve a lot of their problems if they’d just toss a 10-15 million dollar multi year contract at an outfielder. And they may need to trade for a SS. That alone would change things pretty drastically.

That said, I’m a Pirates fan, so let’s try to do it another way. They could move a lesser pitcher, like Keller or Falter, or even one of the prospects for what they need and not force headline stating pitcher into the conversation.

Just by acting like a normal team they could avoid doing something as painful as trading a phenom, and the literal only reason the baseball world looks in this direction. At least for now.

How it Could Play out

Here’s the thing, if the Pirates don’t perform some miracle and extend Paul, we’ll be talking about trading him in 2028 or 2029, and yes, it’ll be for less than these silly packages I just mentioned, but it could be easier to find a partner and you could still easily use him to answer a question elsewhere.

Hopefully backed by a rotation that has grown together and capable of absorbing the loss much more capably than they could now.

It will still hurt, you’ll still lose the deal, but the hope is that in 4-5 years of Skenes you can make all the puzzle pieces fit and get something out of it. Take him out of the equation now and you might very well add talent, but you’ll have to develop that staff and that could take a couple years. For instance, Bubba Chandler right this second is baseball’s number 2 prospect and top pitching prospect. Mitch Keller used to be up there too. It can go that way, and does a lot more often than it goes the way Paul has. Nobody has come on like Paul has.

I caution you, if that’s what you’re picturing for Barco or Chandler or whomever, you take a step back and realize that’s simply not likely.

I’m not predicting they’ll suck, I’m just saying, don’t be shocked if you don’t see the best of Bubba for a year or two.

The time is now to build on this team, fill the holes and take advantage of the best gift this game could give a franchise, a stud and irreplaceable generational talent.

The moral of the story, I don’t think it’s smart to consider at the moment, I don’t think a workable deal is out there, and I think it would be improving an aspect of the team while sacrificing what made the team even sniff special to begin with.

Maybe the best way to put it, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

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