Former Pirate flameout delivers subtle warning Paul Skenes needs to hear

The Milwaukee Brewers have rocketed up the NL Central standings of late, entering play on Monday tied for first place with the Chicago Cubs. And starter Quinn Priester has been one of the biggest and unlikeliest reasons why: The righty has gone from afterthought to budding ace in just a matter of months, posting a 3.33 ERA over 18 appearances and 13 starts since coming over to Milwaukee in a trade with the Boston Red Sox back in April.

But before he was thriving with the Brewers, before he was even in Boston, he was a former first-round pick and top pitching prospect that the Pittsburgh Pirates hoped would lead them to a brighter future. Unfortunately, that never worked out: After tearing up the Minors, Priester put up a 6.46 ERA over parts of two seasons with the Pirates before getting dumped at last year's trade deadline. And now that he's turned his career around, he sure seems glad he's no longer in Pittsburgh.

"It motivates you to want to continue that line of putting together good games and giving our offense a chance to win," Priester told MLB Network on Monday afternoon. "I think we're feeding off each other and it's a really fun group."

But he was hardly done rubbing it in.

"I love working with [Milwaukee catchers William Contreras and Eric Haase," he said. "I can go out there and have this blind trust to go out there and execute what they're calling. It feels great being in milwaukee: The team, being a part of this team and this clubhouse has been really special for me and my career ... it definitely feels good to be part of a clubhouse like this, an organization like this."

Of course, every team is going to miss on a player from time to time. Sometimes they need a change of scenery, and sometimes the lightbulb just takes a little while to turn on. But the problem is that this sort of thing has happened to the Pirates a lot. And as Paul Skenes weighs his future in the coming years, it's not hard for him to listen to comments like this and wonder whether he might reach another level in a different organization.

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Paul Skenes can't afford to ignore Quinn Priester's resurgence away from Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh has developed a nasty reputation for doing less with more when it comes to pitching talent. Gerrit Cole was wasting away trying to turn himself into a ground-ball pitcher until the Houston Astros finally unleashed the Cy Young winner he always wanted to be, and everyone from Charlie Morton to Tyler Glasnow has hit a new level after leaving town. Heck, even the team's best non-Skenes pitcher at the moment, Mitch Keller, has settled in somewhere short of his prodigious prospect hype, and who knows whether he'd be able to reach those heights if he'd been drafted somewhere else.

All of which brings us back to Skenes. The 2024 Rookie of the Year is notoriously competitive; it's not enough for him to be as great as he is, he wants to be the best, and he also wants to be surrounded by the best. At this point, the preponderance of evidence suggests that's not Pittsburgh for reasons that go even beyond Bob Nutting's refusal to spend at remotely competitive levels.

Even if the Pirates suddenly committed themselves to a league-average payroll, that would hardly fix the rot that appears to have set into this front office. Pittsburgh boasts an embarrassment of riches when it comes to young pitching, with Bubba Chandler, Hunter Barco and 2025 first-rounder Seth Hernandez all working their way through the system behind Skenes and Keller. But what would make Skenes or anyone else think that those players will actually pan out the way they should?

Just listen to Priester, a man who knows the difference between Pittsburgh and a more competent MLB organization. He certainly seems thrilled to be in better hands now, and it probably won't be long until Skenes begins to wonder what he's missing too.