Skenes warns 2025 could be a wasted year for Pirates if lessons aren’t learned

Paul Skenes warned Friday that 2025 could be a wasted year for the Pittsburgh Pirates if the organization fails to learn the right lessons, even as the 23-year-old ace pursues his first National League Cy Young Award and the club heads toward a 90-plus-loss season. Skenes spoke amid the Pirates' ongoing struggles, saying the team must understand and act on the reasons behind the underachievement to avoid repeating past patterns.

Skenes leads MLB with a 2.03 ERA and has been an All-Star for the second time, a bright spot in an otherwise disappointing season. Pittsburgh's rotation ranks fifth in the majors with a 3.80 ERA, but the offense has failed to provide run support, leaving the Pirates dead last in runs, home runs and OPS. The club also ranks 24th in payroll, a reminder of the constraints the front office faces in adding immediate help.

The onus to improve, Skenes said, falls on the current core, even as management considers outside additions. “There’s room to get better in this locker room,” he said. “We just need to do it. I’m sure we’ll get some pieces and do all that, but my mind right now is ‘What can we do within the locker room to get better, now and for next year?’ There’s urgency to it, and we need to understand that and act on it.”

Pittsburgh hasn’t made the playoffs since the 2015 wild-card game, a drought that has endured through a prolonged rebuild. Skenes’s message underscores a broader challenge: translate elite pitching into sustained success by improving in all areas and building a competitive lineup around a rising star.

As the Pirates look toward 2026, the organization faces a delicate balance between leveraging Skenes’s ceiling and addressing a lineup that has repeatedly fallen short of production. While outside acquisitions may help, the bigger question remains whether the current group can elevate its performance to end the playoff drought and return the franchise to postseason contention.