Trade Deadline Drama: How Skenes Could Become an Unstoppable Force Overnight
The Pirates are going to be sellers and they need to basically just build their team for the next few years around today’s starter, Paul Skenes. I think they might hinder themselves by trading away one of their better pitchers in Mitch Keller, but there are no guarantees that he is traded. Simply put, this team needs big league ready offense right now. If they had Keller and Skenes in a rotation, and a decent offense, they would at least be playoff hopefuls and I’m not sure I’d want to face them in a short series. Skenes is the best pitcher in baseball right now and arguably the best asset in any organization outside of maybe Shohei Ohtani or Aaron Judge. The Pirates tend to handle Skenes with kid gloves, not letting him work deep into games typically. They did let him go six innings in his last game, but I think it was more to do with the pitch count than anything. It all seems weird with how they handle him – he pitches no more than 80 in some games, and has 100 in others. The bottom line with him is you can predict he will throw five innings and allow two or fewer runs. Diamondback hitters are batting just .192 against him in 26 at-bats.
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