Paul Skenes isn't the only young Pirates pitcher who's fed up with Pittsburgh's mess

The Pittsburgh Pirates can't even lose right. Normally, when a team is buried in the standings by midsummer, they pivot to the future — flipping MLB players for young talent at the trade deadline and dedicating the rest of the season to giving prospects some big-league experience.

And yet, amid another lost season, the Pirates are somehow doing none of that. They took less for their top trade asset, closer David Bednar, then actively refused to deal away pending veteran free agents like Tommy Pham and Isiah Kiner-Falefa. As if that weren't bad enough, they're not even using this time to start laying the foundation for 2026: The team's top pitching prospect, righty Bubba Chandler, continues to languish in Triple-A ... and even he's not sure why anymore.

"It's frustrating," Chandler said, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "I don't know. I've thrown 100 innings every year for the last three years. I’ve been ready and know I can help the big-league team."

MLB Pipeline has Chandler ranked as the No. 4 overall prospect in baseball, an imposing righty whose lights-out fastball and array of off-speed stuff might give him the deepest and most dangerous arsenal in the Minors. In an ideal world, he'd join Paul Skenes and Jared Jones as the future of the Pirates rotation, a homegrown group that might be good enough to drag this team back toward contention on its own.

Unfortunately, Pirates fans don't live in that world. They live in Bob Nutting's world, and that means taking the cheap way out at every opportunity until even your own players can't help but put management on blast.

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Pirates risk revolt if Bob Nutting's mismanagement continues

It's genuinely alarming to hear a prospect, let alone one as talented and important for the future as Chandler, go public with their confusion at how their development is being handled. You'd think that Chandler would have been informed as to why he's still at Triple-A after all this time; instead, he seems to be as in the dark as anybody.

Chandler is hardly a finished product. He's walked 46 batters in 92.2 innings so far this season, and his shaky command prevents him from fully unlocking his arsenal and pitching deeper into games. But at a certain point, facing top-tier competition becomes the best thing for his growth as a pitcher; and if anyone were given the benefit of the doubt, shouldn't it be arguably the most talented pitching prospect in the sport?

But don't take our word for it; just look at what Cherington himself said in the wake of last week's trade deadline.

“As we looked forward towards 2026, it was really looking toward, OK, what starting pitchers in the organization have the best chance to be part of that rotation in 2026, and how do we give those guys the best chance to be ready for that?” Cherington told the Post-Gazette on July 31. “As you know, we've got a lot of other guys. ... So as we look towards that period of time in August, September, really trying to set up guys towards going into 2026.”

It's tough to see how Chandler is being set up toward 2026 right now. And even beyond the decision to keep him down, how are you not communicating well enough with your most important prospect? Why does he feel at a loss to explain why he's pitching where he's pitching? Pirates fans should feel relatively optimistic about the future; there's a chance that they have one of the deepest rotations in the sport as early as next, all with years of team control remaining. But it just goes to show that this franchise is rotten at its foundation, and anything it touches will eventually be spoiled.