Before Paul Skenes won a national championship at LSU in 2023, he helped Air Force baseball win its first Mountain West tournament title and clinch its first NCAA regional appearance since 1969. That feat represented what he and his teammates had built.
Skenes believes a similar rise is on the horizon for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
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“We just have to do it,” the Pirates ace told “The Dan Patrick Show” on Tuesday. “And leaving before that would leave a bad taste in my mouth because there was work to be done that we didn’t do.”
Leading up to Skenes winning the NL Cy Young Award unanimously last week, a report from NJ Advance Media’s Randy Miller circulated. In it, an anonymous Pirates teammate was quoted alleging that he had heard Skenes talk about wanting to play for the New York Yankees and wanting to be traded well before he’s set to become a free agent after the 2029 season.
Skenes told reporters he didn’t know where that report came from the night he added a Cy Young Award to a trophy case that also includes a 2024 NL Rookie of the Year award.
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The two-time All-Star again dismissed the report Tuesday, saying, “Obviously, it’s not true.”
“I was frustrated for a couple hours, and then kind of got over it and talked to the media later that night,” Skenes told Patrick on Tuesday.
“It is what it is. There’s stuff that’s going to come out, good and bad.”
Skenes knows he’s not the first star player in a small market to deal with this kind of hoopla. It comes with the territory of playing in a league that doesn’t have a salary cap, and where these types of trades have ultimately happened before.
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The Pirates notably shipped off another former No. 1 pick, Gerrit Cole, after the 2017 season, the pitcher’s fifth with the Bucs, following months of speculation.
Pittsburgh has finished in last place of the NL Central in each of Skenes’ first two seasons in the majors after the Pirates selected him with the top pick in the 2023 draft.
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Skenes admitted to Patrick that losing more than he ever has in his career has been “a huge adjustment.”
“It’s tough to not show up to the field every day and be bitter sometimes, especially when we’re on a seven, eight-game skid,” he said. “I think it just comes down to being a professional. I’ve learned more and more how to do that and just be the same person every day.”
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Skenes added: “It is energizing to think about what it could be, if and when we do win. So that’s the thing that gets me out of bed.”
Skenes beat out the Philadelphia Phillies’ Cristopher Sánchez and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto for the 2025 NL Cy Young Award after posting an MLB-best 1.97 ERA this season. No other qualifying starting pitcher had gone sub-2.00 since Justin Verlander did it with the Houston Astros in 2022.
Although Skenes’ 1.97 ERA was a hundredth of a point higher than his 1.96 ERA from last season, it was the lowest by a Pirates starter with at least 140 innings pitched since 1916, per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He logged enough innings to become the first qualified pitcher in his age-23 season or younger to notch an ERA that starts with a 1 since Dwight Gooden in 1985, according to MLB.com.
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He’s clearly motivated by more than his individual accomplishments, though. He’s not happy with the Pirates’ struggles, but he’s emphasized that he wants to be part of their turnaround.
“It all comes down to how you look at it, right?” Skenes told Patrick. “You can just be bitter at the world and pissed off, or you can fight to do what’s right, make it right — you know, win.”
