Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes has dreams of one day playing for the New York Yankees, per one of his former teammates.

Speaking this week to NJ.com’s Randy Miller, an anonymous player who was teammates with Skenes on the Pirates in 2024 and 2025 discussed the superstar pitcher’s aspirations, saying, “Trust me, he wants to play for the Yankees. I’ve heard him say it multiple times.”

The anonymous player added that Skenes has “no confidence the Pirates ever are going to win,” and is “hoping for a trade” well before he is eligible for free agency in 2030.

Since going first overall to the Pirates in the 2023 MLB draft out of LSU, Skenes has been heralded as a franchise player, and he has already lived up to those lofty expectations.

In 2024, Skenes received a May call-up to the big leagues, and he proceeded to go 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA, 0.95 WHIP and 170 strikeouts over 133 innings pitched.

As a result, Skenes was named the National League Rookie of the Year, and he finished third in the NL Cy Young Award voting.

This past season, Skenes became the first pitcher in MLB history to start the All-Star Game in each of his first two campaigns. He also built upon his spectacular debut.

Although Skenes went just 10-10 for a Pirates team that ranked last in MLB in runs scored, he led the NL in ERA (1.97), WHIP (0.95), ERA+ (217) and FIP (2.36), while striking out a career-high 216 batters in 187.2 innings.

Skenes is a finalist for the NL Cy Young Award along with the Philadelphia Phillies’ Cristopher Sánchez and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and the winner will be announced Wednesday.

Regardless of whether Skenes wins the award, he has proved his worth as a dominant ace, and any team in baseball would undoubtedly love the opportunity to acquire them.

However, Pirates general manager Ben Cherington has been steadfast in his assertion that there are no plans to trade Skenes any time soon.

Per Miller, Cherington recently said of Skenes, “He’s going to be a Pirate in 2026.”

Cherington also addressed the rumor of Skenes wanting to play for the Yankees on Tuesday, choosing to downplay it in favor of focusing on the Pirates.

“I do dismiss it, but I understand it,” Cherington said. “What we’re going to focus on is just how do we win games with him in a Pirates uniform. I have a ton of respect for the Yankees, but we’ll just focus on what we need to do.”

The 23-year-old Skenes is under team control through the 2029 season, and he is arbitration eligible starting in 2027.

Pittsburgh could sign Skenes to a long-term contract extension before then, but there is a good chance it would require the Pirates to give him the largest contract for a pitcher in MLB history.

Given that the Pirates are 29th out of 30 MLB teams in total payroll at just over $31 million, per Spotrac, that may not be in the cards.

While the Pirates may ultimately be unwilling or unable to sign Skenes long term, the Yankees are undoubtedly a franchise with the resources needed to make it happen.