Paul Skenes keeps dragging the Pirates’ future into the same uncomfortable conversation: is he too valuable to keep, or too valuable to ever move?
The idea sounds unthinkable on its face. Skenes is one of baseball’s best arms and, by any measure in the source material, one of the best pitchers in Pirates history. But the question doesn’t go away, especially with the trade deadline a month out and Pittsburgh still sitting in the kind of payroll reality that shapes almost every big decision.
On the field, Skenes has still been good, just not at the level almost everyone expected. He’s 6-8 in 17 starts with a 3.62 ERA over 97.0 innings, 119 strikeouts, 22 walks, a .211 batting average allowed and a 1.01 WHIP. He has not won any of his last nine starts, and during that stretch he’s posted a 5.36 ERA.
That slump is part of why the rumor mill starts spinning now. The bigger reason is financial control.
After this season, Skenes enters arbitration following three pre-arbitration seasons. His pre-arb salaries have been tiny by star standards: $1.085 million this season, which the source says is the highest pre-arbitration salary ever, after making $875,000 in 2025 when he won the National League Cy Young Award.
From here, the process gets expensive. Skenes will set a salary demand for next season, and the Pirates will either accept it or take the case to an arbitration panel. The sides could avoid that through an agreement before then or even with a long-term extension, but the source describes both as highly unlikely, especially if Skenes gets back to form and pushes his arbitration number even higher.
The Pirates’ payroll situation only sharpens the pressure. Their Opening Day figure was $99,925,900, eighth-lowest in MLB, even after some free-agent additions. And there’s another wrinkle hanging over everything: the current CBA expires on Dec. 1, and the source notes that an impending lockout could cost baseball games in 2027 or even the entire season.
That’s why the trade idea keeps surfacing. If Pittsburgh moved Skenes, the club would at least get value back before he played out the final three arbitration years and reached free agency. The Pirates are always looking for prospects or proven pitching and hitting, and because Skenes only takes the mound once every five or six days, the front office could view a return package as worth as much as the player himself.
Still, the organization has not budged publicly. General manager Ben Cherington has repeatedly said the Pirates won’t trade Skenes, including throughout last season, when Pittsburgh finished 71-91 and had the fifth-worst record in baseball.
And there’s a baseball reason to stay put, too. The Pirates are 43-44 through 87 games, three games out in the NL Wild Card race, and their offense has become one of the best in the sport, ranking near the top in most categories.
That’s a dramatic change from 2025. Even so, the lineup still needs more help from the rotation and bullpen, and the bullpen is described as a major deadline need.
For Pittsburgh to turn this season into something real, it needs Skenes to look like the ace he was earlier in 2026 and for the rest of the staff to hold up around him. The source makes the point plainly: the offense alone is not enough without a strong starting rotation, and Skenes at his best could be the difference between just hanging around and making a postseason run.
A deal, if one ever happened, would likely make more sense in the offseason and probably after a new CBA is in place. Even then, the source suggests the Pirates might not get true top value for him right now.
That’s because Skenes isn’t just another pitcher. He’s the face of the Pirates, the kind of player a frustrated fan base latches onto because he represents the possibility of something better.
He has also made his own position clear. After winning the Cy Young Award last season, Skenes had to swat down a rumor that he wanted a trade to the New York Yankees, and he did not leave much room for interpretation.
“I got shown the Tweet and really didn’t think anything of it," Skenes said on the conference call. "I got some texts about it.
I’m on the Pirates, my goal is to win with the Pirates. I love the City of Pittsburgh.
The fans are hungry to have a winner in Pittsburgh and I want to be a part of the group that did that. I think about it the same way as when I was at the Air Force Academy.
We had never been to a conference championship and my sophomore year we ended up winning the conference. We had never finished in the top four in the conference before that."
“Pittsburgh, the way that fans see us outside of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is not supposed to win. There are 29 fan bases that expect us to lose. I want to be a part of the group, a part of the 26 guys that change that.”
“I don’t know where that came from, the goal is to win. I don’t know the reporter that reported it. I don’t know the player that supposedly said that, but the goal is to win and the goal is to win in Pittsburgh.”
That’s the tension in one place: the business case for listening, and the baseball case for never letting go. For now, the Pirates appear to be standing firmly on the second side.
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