Paul Skenes' Success Could Determine Pirates' 2025 Season
Rarely does a player arrive in the big leagues with the expectations Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes had in 2024.
It's even rarer for a player to outperform them, but that's what Paul Skenes did en route to becoming the first Pirates pitcher to win the National League Rookie of the Year. Now, Skenes will be tasked with having a similar or even better season for a Pirates team that has a chance to win a wide-open National League Central division.
ESPN's David Schoenfield listed one key stat that will make or break the 2025 season for every team and picked Skenes' 1.96 ERA for Pittsburgh.
"That's Paul Skenes' rookie season ERA -- not officially a record since he didn't pitch enough innings to qualify, but his 5.9 WAR was the highest for a rookie pitcher since Michael Soroka's 6.1 in 2019 and, really, you have to back to Jose Fernandez in 2013 to find a rookie starter who matched Skenes' overall dominance," Schoenfield writes.
Skenes went 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA in 23 starts and set a Pirates franchise record for a rookie with 170 strikeouts over 133 innings pitched. He was also the first pitcher in MLB history to have an ERA below 2.20 and over 150 strikeouts in their first 21 games and the second pitcher since 1913 to have an ERA below 2.00 through their first 22 appearances.
By comparison, José Fernández went 12-6 with a 2.19 ERA, though, he made 28 starts in his rookie season. The former Marlins ace struck out 187 batters in his 172.2 innings pitched.
With Skenes set to have no limitations in 2025, Schoenfield believes the Pirates ace will be one of the frontrunners to win the NL Cy Young Award. If he were to win the award, he'd be the first pitcher to earn the accolade for Pittsburgh since Doug Drabek in 1992. And if Skenes can maintain the same trajectory he was on in his rookie year for a full season, he could be poised to have one of the best seasons by a pitcher in recent memory.
And if Skenes can string together a stellar second season, the Pirates may find themselves positioned for their first playoff appearance since 2015.
"Skenes probably will be the betting favorite entering the season," Schoenfield writes. "The question is how many innings will he pitch? He pitched 160 last season in making 30 starts between Triple-A and Pittsburgh, so an extra 20% gets him to 192 innings. If he produces WAR at the same rate as 2024, that's an 8.5-WAR season and no starter has done that since Aaron Nola and Jacob deGrom in 2018."
