Paul Skenes is 24 years old, making $1.085 million this season, and is the reigning NL Cy Young winner — running a 3.62 ERA this year while the league adjusts to him. The Pittsburgh Pirates, a franchise whose last playoff game was an October wild card loss in 2015, are sitting four games back of a Wild Card spot on the Fourth of July with the August 3 trade deadline four weeks away.
This is a moment. The only question is whether Bob Nutting has the nerve to treat it like one.
For Pirates fans, this is both thrilling and nauseating, because we’ve seen the setup before. The pieces are in place. The ace is real. The standings say the window is open. And the ownership group has a well-documented habit of squinting at a window like that, nodding thoughtfully, and then quietly boarding it up before anyone gets any ideas.
Jon Morosi reported last week that the Pirates are “planning to buy.” Good. Write it down. Hold them to it.
"I was told they are planning to buy."@jonmorosi shares the latest regarding the Pirates' plans for the Trade Deadline. pic.twitter.com/eSmrKhXaqe
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) July 3, 2026
What the Pirates Actually Need
The needs aren’t complicated. The bullpen is the primary gap: the Pirates rank among the worst in baseball in late-game run prevention, and Skenes can only throw nine innings every five days. You cannot win a playoff series if your seventh inning looks like a giveaway. Pittsburgh needs a closer, or at minimum a reliable late-inning arm who makes opposing lineups uncomfortable. That’s the trade to make. That’s the call Cherington has to make.
The secondary need is an offensive bat, someone who can drive in runs when they need to be driven in, not just put up a respectable OBP in a 7-3 blowout. The Pirates offense is functional, not dangerous. At this point in the season, with the standings where they are, functional isn’t going to cut it.
On adding rotation depth: that’s a lower priority. Skenes is the rotation. Whatever pieces surround him, you’re building around one of the best starting pitchers in the National League, and potentially in all of baseball. You don’t need six aces. You need one, and then you need the team around him to not blow his starts by the fourth inning of the next night’s game.
The Same Story, Different Star
The Pirates were good in 2013. Good in 2014. Good enough in 2015 to make the wild card three straight years. And in each of those windows, ownership found a reason — salary concerns, competitive balance tax implications, the general philosophy that “developing from within” was more sustainable than actually spending to win. Those 2013-2015 Pirates are a case study in how to be just good enough to break your fan base’s heart without ever threatening to actually win anything.
McCutchen was the face of that era. Skenes is the face of this one. The difference is that Skenes might be better than McCutchen was at the same age, and he’s here on a pre-arb deal through 2026, meaning this is literally the cheapest he will ever be. The window is right now, at a discount, and it will not stay open.
This July 4, Pittsburgh fans don’t need fireworks. They need to see Ben Cherington on the phone making a deal that tells the rest of the league the Pirates aren’t just happy to be close. The small-market fatalism, the “we’ll get ’em next year,” the patient rebuilding — declare independence from all of it. Skenes didn’t win a Cy Young to watch this franchise punt another trade deadline.
If Nutting sits on his hands again and Skenes eventually leaves for a team that will actually try to win, nobody in Pittsburgh will be surprised. That’s the saddest part. They’ll just say: of course he did. We knew.
Don’t give them the chance to say that.
