Pirates wasting Paul Skenes' quality starts by failing to provide run support

Andrew McCutchen was in awe of what Paul Skenes accomplished last season, when the 22-year-old right-hander started for the National League in the All-Star Game, won rookie of the year honors and finished third in Cy Young voting in a historic campaign.

But McCutchen warned that it was important for the Pittsburgh Pirates not to be awestruck by Skenes — even after he produced the second-lowest ERA for a rookie with at least 20 starts in MLB history.

“That’s it: You know you’re going to have a chance to win,” McCutchen told TribLive in March. “The thing about it as an offense is you don’t treat it like, ‘All right, he’s going to go seven, and he’s going to shut everybody out.’ Because then you relax as an offense, and you don’t do what you’re supposed to do.”

Those words proved prophetic.

The Pirates have been shut out twice in Skenes’ last six starts, including Sunday’s 1-0 loss at the Philadelphia Phillies. Despite being dominant in recording nine strikeouts against one walk and holding the Phillies to three hits, Skenes still took the loss for the fifth time in 10 starts.

“He pitched unbelievably well,” Pirates manager Don Kelly said on the SportsNet Pittsburgh postgame show, “and deserved a win in that one.”

It was the latest example of Skenes shining on the road. He’s 2-2 with a 1.40 ERA, 0.85 WHIP and .169 batting average-against in six road games this season. Over 17 career road games, his 130 strikeouts are the most in baseball’s modern era and his 1.35 ERA is the lowest in the majors since 1913. But Skenes has a 7-4 record on the road.

“He’s just a competitor,” Kelly said. “He goes out there and was really, really good today. He’s pitching for team wins, not as concerned with personal stuff, which speaks to who he is. He went out there today and pitched really well.”

That the Pirates are wasting a generational talent who was the No. 1 overall pick of the 2023 MLB Draft is sounding off alarms all over the baseball world. They are 18-15 in his 33 career starts, which is almost criminal when considering that Skenes has a 2.12 ERA, 0.95 WHIP and .195 batting average against.

During a guest appearance last week on the “Pat McAfee Show,” ESPN’s Jeff Passan suggested the Pirates should consider trading Skenes even though they have four more years of club control before he’s eligible for free agency.

“If they believe they have absolutely no chance of signing him, then they should trade him,” Passan said Wednesday. “And you can make the argument that they should trade him now. I’m not going to because I think the Pirates, with some of the players that they have coming up, they would have a chance to win if they were to go out and actually bring in some offensive players and sign some free agents.

“But the truth is, there are teams that are going to already ask about Paul Skenes at the trade deadline this year. And I don’t anticipate that he’s going to be moved but there’s a real argument to be made that the best thing for the Pittsburgh Pirates would be to move Paul Skenes when he has his most value. It’s a depressing reality.”

Even more depressing is their lack of run support for Skenes, as the Pirates have scored only 21 runs in his seven quality starts. And that number is skewed by a 10-3 win over the Washington Nationals on April 14. The Pirates have scored only 10 runs in support of Skenes over his last six starts. They have a 3-7 record in his 10 starts this season, with four outcomes decided by one run.

No wonder McCutchen warned that Skenes could suffer the same fate as Jacob deGrom in 2018, when deGrom went 10-9 with a 1.70 ERA in winning the NL Cy Young. The New York Mets went 14-18 in his 32 starts that season, scoring only nine runs over his five starts that May and 11 runs in an eight-game stretch between May 2-June 13.

“It’s no different than Jacob deGrom back in the day, when he had a sub-2.00 and his win-loss record was not great,” McCutchen said. “He had no run support because, offensively, he’s going to give us a chance if we operate as an offense, that we do our thing so that he can go out there and really do his thing. It’s one thing watching him pitch when it’s a 0-0 ballgame; it’s another thing to watch him pitch when we’ve got a lot of runs on the board. Then you really get to watch him pitch. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do that for him more times than not.”

SportsNet Pittsburgh studio analyst Steven Brault, a former Pirates pitcher, believes Skenes hasn’t even come close to performing at his optimum this season. Against the Phillies, Skenes tied his season best with nine strikeouts in his first career complete game. But he had 11 strikeouts twice in his first 11 starts last season.

“We’ve seen him at his floor most of the season. Today, we saw him closer to that top echelon of his ceiling,” Brault said on SNP’s postgame show. “I do believe we’ll see at least one no-hitter from this guy, that we’ll see a 15-punchout game from this guy. It just hasn’t happened yet. Man, what a joy to watch. Unfortunately, the Pirates can’t get the offense going.”