Paul Skenes is only entering his second season with the Pittsburgh Pirates and he already seems desperate for the team to become competitive. He also threw down the gauntlet this weekend and set higher expectations and goals for the team than anybody within the organization has voiced in years.
In response to a question from MLB.com writer Alex Stumpf, Skenes gave a passionate answer about the team needing to win — and win now — because the city of Pittsburgh deserves it.
There is a lot to unwrap from that comment, ranging from the “we owe it to the city,” to also expressing a frustration of still hearing about the team’s 2013 wild-card win against the Cincinnati Reds as if it was a meaningful accomplishment to win a single playoff game.
It is such an eye-opening comment because nobody in the Pirates front office ever speaks definitively about what they expect from the team or what they want to see. It is always vague platitudes about “working toward a championship” or “trying to get better” and “doing it the right way.” There is never a firm expectation. There is never a meaningful goal. It is always just vague emptiness, which is followed by a team that never has the roster to seriously compete.
Outside of a brief three-year window between 2013-15 (Andrew McCutchen’s peak), and a brief three-year window between 1990-92 (Barry Bonds best years with the Pirates), the organization has been a completely non-factor since the 1979 season. They never compete, rarely finish with a winning record and mostly operate as a farm team and player development organization for the rest of the league.
As good as Skenes is, and he already looks like he is one of the best pitchers in baseball, if not the best pitcher in baseball, there is already an expectation that he is going to price his way out of Pittsburgh within the next five years. It already happened once with Gerrit Cole, and seems likely to happen again here.
That means the Pirates only have maybe four or five years to build a winner with him.
This offseason, coming off a second straight 76-win season and sixth consecutive losing season, the Pirates did almost nothing to meaningfully add to their roster. The starting rotation on paper looks strong, but the lineup is short on impact players with few on the horizon in the farm system. Barring some dramatic and unexpected improvements, it seems likely the Pirates will waste another of the few seasons they will have with Skenes.
Fans do not want to see that happen. He does not want to see that happen. He also seems to care more about the situation than anybody involved in the front office.
