The Pittsburgh Pirates have not made the postseason since 2015. They have not finished with a winning record since 2018. They've been among the worst franchises in all of baseball in this millennium, which is a shame. And there isn't much to get excited about for the 2025 Pirates outside of Paul Skenes, who looks to build upon his outstanding Rookie of the Year campaign.
When asked about how he felt about being the fact of the Pirates organization, Skenes instead chose to focus on the state of the team and not himself.
“I think we owe something to the city,” Skenes said.
“We owe a lot to the city. It’s our job to go out and win for the city because this is bigger than all of us. There’s a reason why Cutch keeps coming back, and specifically to Pittsburgh. There’s something about this city. We saw it last summer. We’ve seen it in the videos of the Wild Card Game. I’m tired of watching them because it was a Wild Card Series. The bar needs to be set pretty high. Not taking anything from those guys. The fact that that’s a golden era of recent Pirates baseball, that needs to change. We owe it to the city.”
Skenes couldn't care less about how popular of a player he is. He simply wants the organization to win more than they have in over a decade. Unfortunately, based on the team's Opening Day rotation, the Pirates don't have that same desire to win as many games as they can.
Derek Shelton has informed us that Carmen Mlodzinski has earned a spot in the starting rotation. It will be him, Skenes, Keller, Heaney & Falter. Still no update on Jones.
— Noah Hiles (@_NoahHiles) March 24, 2025
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Pirates Opening Day rotation proves they aren't as serious about winning as Paul Skenes
Jared Jones' injury created a hole in Pittsburgh's rotation, which will be filled by Carmen Mlodzinski, a right-hander who has not gone beyond 2.1 innings in any of his 75 career MLB appearances and has not gone beyond three innings in any of his spring training outings.
I'm not here to argue against Mlodzinski making the team; he has a career 2.91 ERA at the MLB level. I am going to argue against a pitcher who has almost strictly been used as a reliever in his career being plugged into the rotation when the Pirates had several other options.
Bubba Chandler, Thomas Harrington, and Braxton Ashcraft, three of their top six prospects according to MLB Pipeline, were all sent back down to Triple-A. I get sending them down for service time reasons, and that both Chandler and Harrington aren't on the 40-man roster, but at some point, shouldn't this be about winning?
The Pirates play in an incredibly winnable NL Central division. Starting one of those prospects in the Majors could easily prove to be the difference between them breaking their prolonged playoff drought and missing another opportunity to play in October. Yet, the Pirates are more focused on racking up an extra year of service time than they are on winning now.
Decisions like these are why the Pirates haven't done anything over the last decade and why they probably won't anytime soon. They did this with Skenes, who was clearly more than MLB-ready, and it's a shame they haven't learned from that.