Red Sox fans' reckless Paul Skenes speculation is everything they claim to hate

The Pittsburgh Pirates come to Fenway Park for a three-game set against the Boston Red Sox this weekend, and it just so happens that Paul Skenes is slated to start the opener on Friday night — the first time Red Sox fans will get a look at the soon-to-be NL Cy Young winner in his young MLB career. If you thought that New England might be able to be normal about that, well, think again.

While his primary focus is on pitching, Skenes did spend a little bit of time on Friday afternoon taking in his surroundings. It's his first trip to Boston as a pro, after all, and any baseball fan worth their salt would jump at the chance to spend some time poking around a place with as much history in its walls as Fenway.

Of course, this is hardly anything new for Skenes. He's a student of the game and its history, and he loves learning as much as he can no matter where he's at — whether that's Yankee Stadium or Comerica Park or any of the other MLB ballparks he's complimented over the last two years. The fact that he's excited to take in one of the sport's most storied cathedrals doesn't mean much of anything, much like LeBron James or Kobe Bryant fawning over Madison Square Garden had nothing to do with whether or not they wanted to play for the New York Knicks.

That is, unless you ask Red Sox fans, who are now convinced that this means ... something for the likelihood that Skenes will be calling Boston home some time soon. What exactly that something is remains unclear, but rest assured: Tea leaves are being read.

As a reminder, Skenes won't be a free agent until after the 2029 season, so how he might or might not feel about playing for the Red Sox doesn't really matter. The only way a team that isn't the Pirates can get its hands on him is by paying up for the privilege. And even if that weren't the case, what exactly makes Boston think that they'd be his most-desired destination — beyond the same sort of arrogance that this fan base loves to roast when it comes from fans of the New York Yankees?

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Where does Boston rank among likely Paul Skenes landing spots? Not as high as Boston fans think

We just saw the Red Sox swing a trade for a bona fide ace in Garrett Crochet last December, so never say never here. And, in the event (or maybe the inevitability) that Pittsburgh makes Skenes available, there's definitely young talent in Boston that the Pirates would find enticing.

Any honest accounting of the likeliest landing spots for Skenes wouldn't have the Red Sox particularly high on the list, though. Kiley McDaniels' recent re-ranking of MLB farm systems over at ESPN had Boston at No. 14; that has something to do with all the young talent they just graduated to the Majors, from Roman Anthony to Marcelo Mayer to Kristian Campbell to Payton Tolle, but it remains true that the Red Sox would probably lose an arms race should it come to that.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, for example, could make a godfather offer for the righty — and he figures to have plenty of interest in heading back closer to home should the opportunity arise. The Mets are another team that probably has Boston beat, with Jonah Tong and Nolan McLean just the beginning of the young talent New York might make available.

And in the unlikely event that Skenes does stick it out with the Pirates until free agency (or at least the summer of his contract year), what's the Boston connection? Is John Henry suddenly willing to pay what it would take to land the righty on the open market? Skenes hasn't said anything about New England one way or the other; if he has the chance to head back to California, why wouldn't he take it?

The reality is that this is pure wish fulfillment. Or, perhaps more accurately, pure arrogance: Red Sox fans are feeling themselves right now, especially with how well the Crochet trade worked out, and they want more, another deal that will move the team to the top of the AL pecking order for years to come. The irony is that every team wants that, and the sorts of fans that insert their team into every potential move or rumor involving a star player are the sorts of fans that Red Sox Nation used to love poking fun at.

Red Sox fans have become the thing they claim to hate most

Really: If Yankees fans started working themselves into a tizzy after Skenes rode the subway or took a tour of Monument Park, how would Red Sox fans react? Likely with derision — which is appropriate, because there's nothing suggesting that Skenes will ever don pinstripes beyond the fact that New York has landed star players in the past. The only reason that Yankees fans would entertain the notion is by virtue of their sheer Yankee-ness.

That used to be the thing that Boston loved to hate, the thing that differentiated their hard-scrabble supporters from the obnoxious Yankees fans down I-95. Of course, that's an outdated stereotype: The truth now is that there isn't much separating these two franchises or fan bases anymore. The Red Sox have won five World Series in this millennium, and they have as much money as anyone around. Success, and championships, have become the expectation, and the denial of it is now treated as a category error. That's well and good, but at least New York has the decency to be honest about it.