Skenes is going to get paid handsomely this winter.
As the Pittsburgh Pirates enter the 2026-27 offseason, a lot of the focus will continue to be on Paul Skenes and his future with the team. If last offseason is anything like this one, there are going to be rumors flying around that Skenes doesn't want to play with the Pirates any longer and is trying to get to a big market.
All of that talk is frankly ridiculous, but it's part of baseball, unfortunately. All the Pirates can do is do right by Skenes and hope that he's happy with the direction of the organization.
For his sake, this is also a rather big offseason. The right-hander isn't a free agent just yet, but he is arbitration-eligible.
There's reason to believe that he's going to get a ridiculously high figure in arbitration, at least in the sense that it could be the highest of all time for a player in his arbitration situation. This will only be a fraction of what Skenes is eventually going to land on the open market one day, but it does lead to some questions about how the Pirates are going to handle this, especially with ownership being cheap in the past.
“Skenes’ arbitration could be historic, even coming off of a disappointing year by his standards. He could break the record for the highest first-year arbitration total for a pitcher. That mark is $7.25 million for Dallas Keuchel in 2016. But Skenes will not be prohibitively expensive, even for the Pirates.
“That number will affect how the Pirates operate in the offseason. Their payroll is expected to be roughly $93 million, per MLB Spreadsheets. That gives them some flexibility, but not much — assuming baseball’s financial rules remain the same and the Pirates don’t raise their payroll,” Colin Beazley wrote.
I don't want to say that I don't think the Pirates will be cheap in this situation, because history has suggested that they will be.
However, even with Skenes struggling in the sense that he wasn't the best starter in Major League Baseball this year, it doesn't feel like Pittsburgh is going to mess around in this regard. If it wants to, that's one thing, but it really wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for many reasons.
