The Pirates used the 1st pick in the 2023 MLB draft on right-handed pitcher Paul Skenes. The LSU product is seen as a generational pitching prospect and the best since Stephen Strasburg in 2009.
For the Pirates, they get the kind of prospect they’ve long needed in the system. They’ve had some really good prospects but none have been seen in the light that Skenes is in. He is going to be viewed as one of the best prospects in the game and very well could be the top pitching prospect in the game immediately.
With this, the plan for the future of the pitching staff has come into focus. Skenes fits the timeline in which it seems a lot of the top pitchers in the Pirates system currently are projected to come up to the big leagues.
Quinn Priester, the Pirates 1st round pick in 2019, should be up very soon. Jared Jones, who is already in AAA at age 21, has an outside chance at a September audition but will be a factor next season. Kyle Nicolas could see MLB action later this season too. Anthony Solometo, who is 20 in AA and drafted just two years ago, could be in a similar situation next year, if not up even earlier. Mike Burrows and Thomas Harrington look to be factors after that. Jun-Seok Shim, Bubba Chandler, Hunter Barco, Michael Kennedy and others will be guys in the next wave after that. This is of course all headlined by Paul Skenes, who should be able to force the issue and be up with the big club by next June or sooner. It also will include a number of other collegiate pitchers the Pirates took in the 2023 MLB draft. So there’s a lot of pitching coming the next three years.
These guys will join a rotation currently lead by Mitch Keller, who has gotten better and better each year and is looking like a solid top-of-the-rotation guy that would be an awesome number 2 pitcher behind Skenes if he hits his ceiling and fast as he’s expected to. That would be a great 1-2 punch the Pirates haven’t had since Cole and Burnett in 2015.
Besides Keller they have a lot of question marks in the MLB rotation currently. Rich Hill is not a long-term solution obviously. Oviedo and Bido don’t have the looks of long-term MLB starters. Roansy Contreras has lost something and the hope is he finds it since he looked like a rotation mainstay for the future at one point. If he regains form he can reclaim that. Luis Ortiz needs to figure some things out too to be an option. The clock is ticking on all of these guys besides Keller right now.
The other guy is JT Brubaker, who they lost for the season. He showed to be at least a stable and perfectly fine major league starting pitcher, which is valuable in its own right. The Pirates hope he comes back and is at least that upon return. If he is, that’s a spot you can pencil in until/unless something better comes along. Vince Velasquez is also out for the season and they liked him before the injury and he was pitching pretty well. Maybe they’d want to bring him back on a new deal this winter and try again. I’d be for that.
There is a good chance the Pirates go shopping this winter for another starting pitcher or two. They will need the help, even if they view the midseason reinforcements from the system as really good. You can never have enough good pitching.
All in all, the Pirates clear strategy was to get these waves of pitching help in 2023, 2024 and 2025, maybe even some in 2026. They built up the system’s depth in that area for this window they are about to get in the middle of. Drafting Skenes again proves that and they added a true top-flight rotation kind of starter to their multitude of options to take it over the top. The strategy Cherington has had is coming together and it’s sooner than we think.
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