The Buffalo Bills have Josh Allen. The Kansas City Chiefs have Patrick Mahomes. The Oklahoma City Thunder have Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The Pittsburgh Penguins have Sidney Crosby.
What do they have in common? Mid-to-small markets who were able to draft, develop, and retain their star players in a cap/floor league.
The Pittsburgh Pirates will one day find themselves in a position to either extend star pitcher Paul Skenes, or trade him to another club and maximize the return.
It’s harder to retain homegrown stars in baseball, compared to other sports, with the economic structure. Teams like the Kansas City Royals with Bobby Witt Jr. and Cleveland Guardians with Jose Ramirez have shown it’s not impossible.
Pirates pre and post host Dan Zangrilli confirmed on 93.7 The Fan that he heard a rumor surrounding the Pirates discussing a Skenes extension, but admitted it would be an uphill battle to actually get something done.
What could a Skenes extension look like?
I proposed seven years, $370 million on social media. I was crushed by people stating it’s too much money to give Skenes in arbitration years. My colleague on 93.7 The Fan, Joe Starkey, thinks Skenes will earn a $500 million contract in free agency.
Skenes has four years remaining on his contract with one additional year of pre-arb before three in arbitration.
When you think about it, the deal isn’t as crazy as you might think.
Cody Bellinger made a record $11.5 million in his first year of arbitration after already winning NL MVP. Juan Soto broke the bank in his final year of arbitration with a $31.5 million price tag in 2024.
Skenes’ potential deal would buy-out three years of free agency and provide him $50 million per year.
If $370 million sounds way too steep and you want to hypothesize off a rising arbitration scale, a seven-year, $227 million contract is an idea.
To note, this is just me spitballing ideas. If the Pirates were to sign Paul Skenes, they would need to do something historic to make it happen.
It’s fun for Pirates fans to speculate on what a deal could look like. At the same time, do you have confidence it can actually happen?
The odds are significantly stacked against it. If it were to happen, and yes the disparity in dollar figures between my originally outlined deal and breaking it down on a rising scale are significant, it would take a ton of money.
That’s possibly what it would take to make Paul Skenes a Pirate through the decade.