The Pirates are wasting Paul Skenes brilliance, and he better get used to it

Here's the thing about baseball that makes it so much different than other sports. There's no salary cap and there's no salary floor. That means that you can pay your roster as much or as little money as the ownership desires. That's how the Marlins have $15 million expended on their active rosters while there are teams with over $200 million issued out.

The point that I'm making here is that the Pittsburgh Pirates are a team that's become notorious for being cheap. They don't pursue big trades or big name free agents and it's resulted in them being below average for a long time now.

They were given the first overall pick in the 2023 MLB Draft for being as bad as they have been in recent years, and they watched as a generational pitcher dropped straight into their lap. LSU's Paul Skenes was a perfect mix of this generation's flamethrowers and last generation's command specialists.

And not even a year into his big-league career and it's already quite apparent that Pittsburgh is going to waste away prime years of his career.

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Pirates wasting Paul Skenes brilliance and it's honestly sad

The Pirates have consistently set Skenes up for failure beginning with the lineups that are sent out behind him. Skenes was given lineups with multiple sub-.200 level hitters in it for the first few starts of his big league career. It was basically the Pirates handing him the ball as a rookie and telling him to go put the team on his back and in the game himself.

Relief pitching has also fallen apart behind him.

Let's do some math real quick here.

Skenes has made 14 starts in his career prior to Saturday's start against the Los Angeles Dodgers, with one going to extra innings resulting in 127 total innings of baseball that Skenes has been the starting pitcher for. Of these innings, Skenes has thrown 86 of them allowing 19 earned runs, good for a sub-2.00 ERA.

Across the 41 innings that the relievers have covered behind him, they've allowed a total of 26 runs. That's good for a combined bullpen ERA north of 5.50. Combine that with a lineup that barely produces behind him and you have Skenes vs the world, seemingly. Are you serious, Pirates?

Somehow, the Pirates have won nine of Skenes 14 starts before Saturday, mainly because he has been so dominant.

Stil, he suffered a loss in a game where he allowed two runs over 8.1 innings. He's received no decisions in games where he allowed one or less earned runs over 6+ innings a total of five times in 14 starts.

Unless the Pirates front office makes a huge change with their way of doing business, they won't be aggressive in adding Skenes any additional help. And that's quite a shame because this team has such a talented young core with even more talented funneling up through the farm system.