Paul Skenes Wins NL Cy Young As Speculation About Him Being A Yankee Appears

Paul Skenes was named the unanimous winner of the National League Cy Young Award on Wednesday night. Since achieving this feat with the Pittsburgh Pirates, speculation has begun about when he might leave a franchise that has not made a playoff appearance since 2015 and has not won a playoff series since 1979.

Among the teams frequently mentioned as potential destinations for Skenes in the near future are the New York Yankees. This narrative gained traction on the second day of the MLB General Manager meetings in Las Vegas, when NJ.com published a story highlighting a Pirates teammate’s remarks about Skenes’ apparent dream of playing for the Yankees someday.

So far, Skenes’ only experience with the Yankees was a brief two-inning cameo on the final Saturday of the 2024 season at Yankee Stadium. During that outing, he struck out both Juan Soto and Aaron Judge, while his gymnast girlfriend Livvy Dunne cheered him on. This came at the end of Skenes’ rookie season, during which he won Rookie of the Year over Jackson Merrill while playing for a Pirates team that finished with 76 wins. At the time, there was no speculation about his future, but it’s the kind of story likely to resurface occasionally unless the Pirates either lock him into a long-term contract or decide to trade him.

Though it’s not quite like Gerrit Cole’s well-known Yankees fandom—demonstrated as a child in 2001 with a sign at the World Series—the rumors surrounding Skenes have become prominent enough for Pirates General Manager Ben Cherington to address them directly.

“What we’re going to focus on is just how do we win games with him in a Pirates uniform,” Cherington told reporters. “I have a ton of respect for the Yankees but we’ll just focus on what we need to do.”

What Cherington and the Pirates need to do is build a competitive team around Skenes. Despite winning the Cy Young Award, Skenes recorded only 10 wins—tied for the fewest ever for a starting pitcher to win the award in a full season. He joined Jacob deGrom as the only pitchers to win the Cy Young with just 10 wins.

DeGrom’s 2018 season saw him finish 10-9 with a 1.70 ERA and 269 strikeouts while pitching for a Mets team that won 77 games and had a payroll of roughly $150 million. Skenes went 10-10 with a 1.97 ERA and 216 strikeouts, pitching about 30 fewer innings, for a Pirates team that won 71 games on a significantly smaller payroll.

Run support—or the lack thereof—played a major role in Skenes’ record. In all 10 of his losses, the Pirates scored three runs or fewer, including four shutout losses. In 19 of his 32 starts, Pittsburgh scored three runs or fewer. This lack of offensive production resulted in a 17-15 record in games he started and contributed to the Pirates finishing 71-91, marking the 14th time since 1992 that Pittsburgh has lost at least 90 games.

These figures echo deGrom’s 2018 struggles with run support. The Mets were 14-18 in deGrom’s starts that year, with three runs or fewer scored in 20 of his 32 starts—including seven of his nine losses.

The stark difference between the two pitchers, however, was payroll. The Pirates operated with a roughly $87 million payroll in 2024, which matched their final number of that year and was two million less than their 2019 payroll—the year Gerrit Cole would have become a free agent with Pittsburgh had he not been traded to Houston after the 2017 season.

Talk about Skenes’ future departure from Pittsburgh and links to the Yankees is expected to continue until something definitive happens. The Pirates have been consistently among the league’s lowest payroll teams, finishing in the bottom five 16 times since Bob Nutting purchased the franchise in 2007.

“In a nice way, it’s really simple because what matters most to [Skenes] is what matters to us,” Cherington said. “Win more games. That’s the focus because that’s what is going to be most important to him. What probably gives us the best chance to keep him in Pittsburgh for longer is winning games, and that’s what we need to do anyway.

“So in a way it helps simplify it and focus it. My conversations with him, the only thing we talk about is winning and how to do that.”

For now, the Pirates may increase their payroll incrementally, but it remains to be seen if that will be enough to make them contenders in a league where 83 wins were required to reach the playoffs, as was the case with the Cincinnati Reds.

Until Pittsburgh demonstrates a payroll closer to the league median, the buzz surrounding when Paul Skenes will leave will persist. However, it seems unlikely that his departure will occur within the next year.
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