Pittsburgh Pirates Organization Doesn't Deserve Paul Skenes After Another Embarrassing Loss

The Pittsburgh Pirates continue to be a national embarrassment, and they're doing their best to waste the peak of one of the best young pitchers in recent baseball history.

Paul Skenes has not only lived up to his pre-debut expectations, he's exceeded them. After a dominant 2024, finishing the season with just a 1.96 ERA and 170 strikeouts in 133 innings, Skenes has been similarly elite to start the 2025 campaign. While his strikeouts are down, 85 in 83.1 innings, he has a 2.05 ERA and has cut his walks and home run rate while limiting hard contact.

And the Pirates are wasting it by refusing to build a reasonable team around him. To the point where highly regarded Major League Baseball reporters openly discussed Pittsburgh taking calls about his availability at the trade deadline. So much so that the Pirates were forced to deny it by leaking to another subset of reporters.

READ: Pittsburgh Pirates 'Building' Around Paul Skenes Is One Of MLB's Funniest Ideas

Then Tuesday night exemplified, yet again, why the Pirates organization simply doesn't deserve to have Skenes on the roster.

Pittsburgh Pirates RHP Paul Skenes fires one in vs. the San Francisco Giants at PNC Park in Pennsylvania. (Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports)

Pittsburgh Pirates Lose Another Dominant Paul Skenes Start

Skenes against the Houston Astros turned in yet another typically excellent start. And was rewarded in typically disappointing Pirates fashion. 

Eight innings pitched, just three hits allowed, one walk, eight strikeouts, and one run. Sure enough, he left the game trailing 1-0, before the Astros tacked on two more runs in the ninth to win 3-0. If that sounds familiar, it's because almost the exact same game played out for Skenes just a few weeks ago.

On May 18, Skenes went eight innings against the fearsome Philadelphia Phillies lineup, allowing just three hits, one walk, one run and nine strikeouts. And lost 1-0. 

In fact, per The Athletic, it's the first time since Pedro Martinez in the year 2000 that a pitcher has had two starts with eight innings pitched or more, zero or one run allowed, one walk or fewer, and eight plus strikeouts in a single season, and lost both starts. And it's only the first week of June. The 2025 Pittsburgh Pirates in a nutshell.

There's plenty more ridiculous stats where that came from. Skenes has allowed just 19 runs in 13 starts thus far, and the Pirates have lost eight of those games. They're 5-8 when he starts. Incredible. 

Since 1947, there's only been 21 pitchers to have an ERA of 3.00 or below and lose 17 games. Skenes is on pace to lose 16 games with a 2.05 ERA. The 2025 Pittsburgh Pirates.

So just how bad is the Pirates organization at building a competent roster? 

Well, it ranks 29th out of 30 teams in weighted runs created plus, a measure of overall offensive success created by Fangraphs. League average is 100, the Pirates as a team have a 79 wRC+, 21 percent worse than the league as a whole. The only team worse? The historically bad Colorado Rockies.

As a team, the Pirates are 60 runs worse than average, almost a run per game worse than just an average MLB team. They're 136 runs worse than the league-best Dodgers offense. They're also the second worst baserunning team, ahead of only the Seattle Mariners. They're below average on defense.

The Pirates' offense has hit .226/.304/.337 this season. That .641 OPS is, of course, near the bottom of the league. There isn't a single thing the Pirates do well.

It's one thing to try to build a deep, well-rounded roster and fail. The Pirates though, aren't trying. They simply don't care to compete, to win as many games as possible, because it would cost too much and eat into ownership profits. Instead of building around a budding superstar, they added Tommy Pham, Andrew McCutchen and Enmanuel Valdez. That was their grand plan to support Skenes on offense.

It's pathetic, it's embarrassing, and Skenes deserves better. It's too bad he's never going to get it in Pittsburgh.