{"id":7300,"date":"2025-05-07T07:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T07:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/7300\/"},"modified":"2025-05-07T07:02:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T07:02:10","slug":"can-pittsburgh-pirates-ace-paul-skenes-become-baseballs-first-half-billion-dollar-pitcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/7300\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes become baseball\u2019s first half-billion-dollar pitcher?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Skenes<\/a> has taken the baseball world by storm since making his debut in May 2024 for the Pittsburgh Pirates<\/a>. The 22-year-old ace who was last year\u2019s National League Rookie of the Year throws in the triple digits and overmatches hitters with his repertoire.<\/p>\n

In the first 30 starts of his career, Skenes has posted a 2.15 ERA, 211 strikeouts in 175 2\/3 innings, a 0.939 WHIP, 195 ERA+, 2.58 FIP, and 6.9 bWAR, while going 14-6.<\/p>\n

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Since Skenes captured the NL Rookie of the Year award, he gained a full year of service time, meaning he will hit free agency after the 2029 season when he\u2019s only 27.<\/p>\n

The biggest contract for a pitcher currently belongs to Los Angeles Dodgers\u2019<\/a> Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a>, who received a 12-year, $325 million deal prior to the 2024 season. Both Max Scherzer<\/a> and Justin Verlander<\/a> hold the highest annual averages for a pitcher at $43.3 million.<\/p>\n

Once Skenes hits free agency \u2014 and stays healthy \u2014 he should break both records. According to ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan<\/a>, it\u2019s not out of the realm of possibility Skenes becomes the first pitcher to make half-a-billion dollars.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 22-year-old helped his clock by winning Rookie of the Year and the full year of service that comes with it,\u201d writes Passan. \u201cHe\u2019ll be just 27 when he\u2019s on the market after the 2029 season. And if [Tarik] Skubal (or [Eury] P\u00e9rez) does indeed crack the $400 million threshold, it would be no surprise to see Skenes \u2014 the best pitching prospect in a generation \u2014 parlay his productivity, age and marketability into becoming baseball\u2019s first half-billion-dollar pitcher.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s hard to imagine frugal Pirates owner Bob Nutting shelling out that kind of coin for Skenes, so it wouldn\u2019t be a surprise if Pittsburgh ultimately trades the superstar before he hits free agency. Pirates fans should enjoy him as long as they have him.<\/p>\n

Related Headlines<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Skenes has taken the baseball world by storm since making his debut in May 2024 for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,75,388,57,381,4,505,877,10,2320,776,64,4297,954,313],"class_list":{"0":"post-7300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-pirates","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-free-agency","10":"tag-justin-verlander","11":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","12":"tag-max-scherzer","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-national-league","15":"tag-paul-skenes","16":"tag-pirates","17":"tag-pitcher","18":"tag-pittsburgh","19":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","20":"tag-pittsburghpirates","21":"tag-skubal","22":"tag-yoshinobu-yamamoto"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}