LAS VEGAS — The Pittsburgh Pirates will not trade Paul Skenes this offseason, general manager Ben Cherington reiterated Tuesday, quashing any simmering speculation about the ace right-hander possibly being moved and altering Major League Baseball\u2019s landscape.<\/p>\n
Cherington shared that he has regularly received inquiries from clubs regarding Skenes\u2019 availability and said the conversations are always short.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question gets asked, and it\u2019s always respectful,\u201d Cherington said at the General Managers meetings. \u201cTeams have to ask the question. I suspect that won\u2019t end. But the answer\u2019s been consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n
The question keeps surfacing because Skenes, just two seasons into his major league career, is arguably the best pitcher in the sport at just 23 years old and the Pirates have failed to build anything close to a winning roster around him.<\/p>\n
The Pirates finished last in the National League Central for the second straight season despite Skenes leading the majors with a 1.97 ERA in 187\u2154 innings across 32 starts. He made the All-Star team again and is the favorite to win the NL Cy Young Award on Thursday. And yet the Pirates finished 71-91, five games worse than in 2024.<\/p>\n
Trading Skenes would net Pittsburgh a massive return, but the Pirates view Skenes as a building block as they seek to reach the postseason for the first time since 2015. Instead, Cherington said the club this winter, with more payroll \u201cflexibility\u201d to acquire talent, will prioritize improving an offense that ranked last in the majors in runs scored and 29th in wRC+ in 2025 to better complement its pitching staff. Headed by Skenes, the Pirates\u2019 promising projected starting rotation also includes veteran Mitch Keller and heralded prospect Bubba Chandler.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe our pitching is a strength,\u201d Cherington said. \u201cDoesn\u2019t mean we wouldn\u2019t want to add more pitching. We will certainly be opportunistic on the pitching side. There are some things that we\u2019d like to do on the pitching side, but run scoring was the thing that got in our way more than anything. And we\u2019ve got to add to that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS — The Pittsburgh Pirates will not trade Paul Skenes this offseason, general manager Ben Cherington reiterated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,126693,82],"class_list":["post-277500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-pittsburgh-pirates-sports-baseball-team-team-statscom-247","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}