Paul Skenes, focused on winning in 2025, not in the long term

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Paul Skenes ready to pitch unlimited innings in 2025 and make Pirates a winning team


PITTSBURGH — Paul Skenes has a lot on his mind. The chances of the ever-curious National League Rookie of the Year staying with the Pittsburgh Pirates indefinitely isn’t one of them.

“I haven’t given it too much thought,” Skenes said Sunday when asked about the chances of him signing an extension with the Pirates.

Pittsburgh’s quiet offseason in free agency has provided little relief to the angst among the fan base that the club is already on borrowed time with the hard-hitting right-hander, who became a sensation at the time. that the top pick in the 2023 draft made his major league debut last May armed with an electric 100 mph fastball.

Skenes’ arrival gave the city and the franchise a needed jolt. However, this has not exactly motivated the general manager Ben Cherington to spend big over the winter to bolster an offense that complements what could be one of baseball’s best rotations led by Skenes and 23-year-old Jared Jones.

One fan has started a billboard campaign urging Pirates president, Bob Nuttingto sell the equipment. A little chant of “Sell the team!” broke out even at the club’s annual fan festival, and the vice president Travis Williams responded during a question-and-answer session that Nutting had no interest in doing so.

At this point, neither does Skenes, who pointed to Pittsburgh’s young core of talent and adjustments to the coaching staff as proof that the team hasn’t sat idly by after a second straight 76-86 finish.

“The group we have from last year is going to be better, I think, than we were last year,” Skenes said. “We’re going to have more experience. I don’t think you can overstate the impact that coaches can have on this as well, so we made some good additions there. It’s not complicated. It’s hard to do, but it’s not complicated.”

The Pirates hired Matt Hague to run their hitting program and they brought in the veteran pitching guru Brent Strom to help a staff full of potential but short of experience.

The outside fear is that the club might have limited time to maximize its window while Skenes is on the roster. Although the Pirates have locked up some of their long-term cornerstones, including outfielder Bryan Reynolds and pitcher Mitch Keller, in recent years, keeping Skenes would be another matter. He will be arbitration eligible after the 2026 season, and the list of high-end pitchers the club has gotten rid of before they became too expensive includes Gerrit Cole and Joe Musgrove.

Skenes, however, is not stuck in the future. There is too much at stake in the present. He’ll be grateful when he arrives at spring training in Bradenton, Fla., next month as a full-fledged major leaguer without worrying about any sort of innings limit like the one the team imposed last year to protect his arm. He was totally on board with the idea, even saying at the end of the season that it worked perfectly.

“I’m going to be ready to pitch 240 innings,” said Skenes, who was 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA in 23 starts. “It’s not going to be 160 innings again. I know that. It’s going to be a lot more, ‘Take the ball and pitch.'”

Off the field, Skenes hopes to take a greater role in creating a clubhouse culture designed to create a productive environment. He spent part of his offseason canvassing veterans on other teams for ideas.

“I don’t know what the character of that is, but he probably has something else to say,” Skenes said. “There’s still a long way to go. I’m not going to go overboard, but winning is winning. We have to do what we have to do to make it happen.”

He has spent part of the winter training in Charlotte, North Carolina, and trying to come to terms with his growing fame.

“The good thing about the offseason is that people forget about you because it’s not baseball season,” Skenes said. “It never completely goes away. That’s just the way it is. It’s the new normal.”

He’s aware of the huge gap between teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Pirates, who haven’t been to the playoffs since 2015. No, he’s not willing to use it as an excuse for failure.

“There’s no reason we can’t play fundamental baseball and execute it at a very high level without having players like (Shohei Ohtani),” he said. “It’s not a complicated game.”