After a difficult season that saw the Pirates flash signs of life in the first half with a 48-48 record before crashing to a 28-38 record after the All-Star break, Pittsburgh GM Ben Cherington discussed a few of the club’s key players as they team now looks ahead toward the 2025 campaign and the coming offseason.
Chief among those was like NL Rookie of the Year favorite Paul Skenes. For all of the club’s faults this year, Skenes was the most obvious bright spot as he was nothing short of dominant practically from the moment he made his big league debut back in May. In 23 starts from then on, Skenes posted an eye-popping 1.96 ERA with an excellent 2.45 FIP. With a 33.1% strikeout rate across his 133 innings of work, Skenes was perhaps the most dominant pitcher in all of MLB this year. The one flaw in is otherwise dominant rookie campaign was volume, as Skenes threw just 160 1/3 innings of work in total this year between the major and minor leagues. That includes eight starts where Skenes failed to pass 80 pitches in his outing.
Fortunately, that seeming unwillingness to have Skenes pitch deep into games faded as his season continued, with the right-hander ultimately throwing more than 100 pitches in six of his 23 big league outings. What’s more, Cherington told reporters (including Alex Stumpf of MLB.com) that the hard-throwing righty could find himself unleashed completely next year. Cherington indicated that the Pirates do not currently plan on “any sort of hard limits” on Skenes’s innings or pitch counts headed into 2025, leaving the door open for Skenes to post an even stronger season next year should he be able to post something close to this season’s results over a full slate of 30 starts. The righty figures to headline Pittsburgh’s rotation next year, followed by Jared Jones and Mitch Keller. There’s some uncertainty at the back of the club’s rotation behind those three, but Johan Oviedo, Luis L. Ortiz, and Bailey Falter could all be in the mix for starts as well.
Looking beyond the rotation, Cherington notably also offered a vote of confidence in longtime closer David Bednar, who struggled badly throughout the 2024 campaign and was eventually removed from the closer role in late August. Bednar’s results improved over the month of September but his peripheral numbers remained shaky, as he posted a solid 3.38 ERA but walked (ten) more batters than he struck out (nine) across 10 2/3 innings of work. That left Bednar with an overall ERA of 5.77 on the year, and while his 4.80 FIP offered some reason for optimism even that figure was still worse than average as it was held back by a 10.7% walk rate.
Given Bednar’s brutal performance and a fairly considerable $6.6MM salary projection for next season courtesy of MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz, it wouldn’t be a shock to see the club explore moving on from Bednar this winter. If that possibility is on the table, however, Cherington did not acknowledge it. On the contrary, Stumpf notes that Cherington suggested Bednar could even recapture the closer’s role in time for 2025. Even in spite of Bednar’s poor performance, such an outcome would hardly be a shock. After all, the club has few proven relievers under team control besides Colin Holderman and Bednar dominated to the tune of a 2.25 ERA with a 2.56 FIP over the 2021-23 seasons. If Bednar can even come close to that sort of production next year, he’d be well worth the $6.6MM investment via arbitration.
Now turning to the positional side, Cherington also provided a small update (as relayed by Stumpf) on third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes. A former top-of-the-line infield prospect who enjoyed something of a breakout campaign in 2023 where he paired excellent defense with a roughly league average at, Hayes appeared sure to join Skenes, Jones, and Oneil Cruz among the club’s core this season. Instead, injuries derailed Hayes’s year completely. He was limited to just 96 games by a disc problem in his back that sent him to the injured list twice this year and left him playing through pain for the majority of the year when he was on the field. The injury marred campaign led to disastrous results, as Hayes hit just .233/.283/.290 in 396 trips to the plate alongside defensive numbers that were a far cry from previous seasons.
Difficult as 2024 was for Hayes, however, Cherington expressed optimism about the infielder’s status as he looked ahead to 2025. The GM acknowledged that there’s “always some level of concern” regarding an injured player until he’s once again on the field, but added that he believes the club is better informed about Hayes’s injury situation and that the third baseman is “excited” to return to action in 2025. When Hayes was unable to take the field this year, Jared Triolo and Isiah Kiner-Falefa were the club’s primary options at the hot corner this year. Both players are in line to return to the club next year and could continue backing up the position in the event Hayes struggles to stay on the field in 2025 as well.
bucsfan0004
Nice positive spin on the Cherington press conference from last Wednesday, which i thought was a train-wreck
mlb1225
I have a strong feeling he wants to say more, specifically about how ownership wants things run, but ovbiously won’t for professional reasons.
SweetBabyRayKingsThickThighs
Offer Skenes a ten year contract, throw in lifetime passes to Nutting’s sky resort to sweeten the deal.
PiratesFan1981
He sold all his Ski Resorts in 2021 or 2022. All he has is his family newspaper company outside of the Pirates. But this spend cheap to find lighting in the bottle type of player(s), needs to end. This isn’t early 2000s anymore. This bargain shopping won’t win the amount of games to be relevant again. This is a poorly funded team because of a cheap owner who just cares about the money. What PNC Park brings in yearly, is triple or what ski resorts were accomplishing in 4 years. He treats the stadium and team as a tourist attraction. Paul Skenes gives Bob that golden ticket to capitalise on profits coming in. Sometimes I wish Cuban bought the team (even if he moved them to Dallas), it would have been better for the organization than what we have seen for nearly 30 years it’s a disgrace to all the great players who played in Pittsburgh. From Honus Wagner to Roberto Clemente to Andrew McCutchen, it’s an big slap in their faces.
el_chapo_
1st objective is get skenes on a high dosage of acutane, after that facial mess clears up then get him a razor and shave off that hideous mustache of his. Once both of those are finished get him to a competent barber and have him clean up that mess he has on top of his head.
Oh, and also offer him a contract extension 10 years 350mm to 12 years 400mm.
old elpaso
First paragraph, classless
Second paragraph, clueless
Blackpink in the area
What about a deal involving Bubba Chandler and Jarren Duran? Pirates need a lefty hitting center fielder. Red Sox need to trade some lefty hitters and have other center field options.
mlb1225
If it were up to me, I’d make that deal in an instant. But Chandler seems like an untouchable, and I doubt the Sox are in a rush to trade him right now.
Mercenary.Freddie.Freeman
So el Chapo wants skenes completely hairless on his head… interesting.
pjmcnu
Skenes will be unleashed in 2025. Said Pirates GM Ben Cherington, “We don’t plan any limits for Skenes. He only really has to hold up for 3 more years, 4 max. Then we’ll trade him for prospects. We certainly aren’t going to pay anyone SP1 money. I doubt Mr. Nutting will want to pay Skenes his likely Arb Year 2 money. If his arm falls off while playing for a team with an owner who wants to win, it’s not our problem. So if he’s got a perfect game going into the 7th inning at 105 pitches, he ain’t coming out. That will sell tickets!” A club official who requested anonymity later clarified that Nutting does want to win, just not if it requires a payroll higher than $80M.
mlb1225
I’m about to write what is essentially an essay, but after such a frustrating year, I need to let out some frustration.
I want to first rattle off my positive thoughts. The Pirates actually feel like they’ve figured something out with their pitching development. Paul Skenes is the obvious big success story, but Jared Jones, Bailey Falter, Kyle Nicolas, Dennis Santana, Luis Ortiz all took steps forward. Their minor league top prospects have looked fantastic too and also took steps forward. That’s something that hasn’t happened in years, both Major and Minor league pitchers in the organization making huge leaps forward.
Oneil Cruz had a very promising season. There were some bumps in the road, but after coming off a huge leg injury, to see him back at full strength was a fun sight. His move to center field was a lot better than I think anyone could have expected. He didn’t have any trouble running good routes or getting a good jump on the ball, two things many worried about because of how different the angle is, and he immediately became the hardest throwing position player in baseball. He worked really hard with Michael A. Taylor to make a good first impression.
I don’t think this team is as far out as some want to paint it out to be. I’ll admit, I’m biased and more optimistic than most, but there’s a solid foundation here. It’s now on the Pirates to build upon that foundation by adding players and improving the ones they currently have. There have been some other positives, other than pitching development. Oneil Cruz was good and took to center field much better than anyone could have expected. Nick Gonzales and Joey Bart were big positives. Billy Cook and Nick Yorke showed some promise in September. Hopefully they can continue to do that next year. As things stand right now, I think they’re a potential WC contender.
Now let me rattle off my negative opinions on the team. Well first of all, I think it’s easy to say they fell well short of expectations. Me personally, I had them winning 82-83 games, which is only a 6-7 game improvement from last year. You’d think that getting a healthy and solid season from Oneil Cruz, a mostly full season from Paul, and the other multiple positives I mentioned earlier would be enough to give them that boost. It wasn’t, because of many other things that went wrong.
The Pirates, the bare minimum this off-season (regarding the coaching staff), need to completely re-evaluate what they’re teaching their hitters at the Major League level. Jack Suwinski went into this year with the expectation he could be a potential run producing threat after swatting 26 home runs with a .793 OPS, and 112 wRC+. He couldn’t even crack a .600 OPS or a 70 wRC+. He had a huge change in approach, and it took until September this year at Triple-A for him to figure things out again. If it was one instance of a player struggling badly after a solid season prior, that’s one thing. Every team has had a player or two have a bad year.
But the Pirates had Michael A. Taylor, Edward Olivares, and Jared Triolo each have a drop in wRC+ of 20 points or greater from 2023 to 2024. Not to mention that the players they did acquire mid-season, like Bryan De La Cruz and IKF also taking huge steps back after getting traded to the Pirates. I’ll give BDLC and IKF a pass for now, but when you have multiple other players take huge steps back, having 3-4 of what was supposed to be key parts of your line-up decline during the same season is suspicious. Once or twice is normal, 3, 4, 5 times, that’s a huge problem. Not to mention many of the prospects who did well at Triple-A, like Henry Davis and Ji Hwan Bae, did not take a step forward.
Luckily, the Pirates at least know something different has to be done in the hitting department, as they’ve already moved on from Andy Haines, which is a good way to start the off-season. When you have that many players take a huge step back, and multiple others look for help outside the org, something needed to be done, and something was.
The real wild card for next season, as things stand right now, is Ke’Bryan Hayes. I hate to see what happened to him this season, but his struggles aren’t entirely his fault. He was playing through a herniated disc and it was clear something was off. Any raw power he showed last year was gone. He never had an exit velocity below 90 MPH since getting into MLB, and last year he had a career high 92.2 MPH exit velo. But this year it was just 88.9 MPH. That’s like the difference between Joc Pederson or Marcell Ozuna, to Ty France or Jon Singleton.
Not only could you tell by his huge dip in raw power numbers, but something was clearly bothering him based on his play style and body language. Hayes always puts 110% effort out there, especially on the defensive side of the ball, and we saw that last year. But he just physically couldn’t do that without pain this year. He was unhappy with himself, and you could tell. I can appreciate the admirable effort to play through it, but it led to some pretty bad results.
Unfortunately, the only thing the Pirates can do with Hayes is put him through good physical therapy and pray his back strengthens up enough where he can get some of that raw strength back and can make the plays at third he was making the last few years. There really isn’t a surgery that can fix every and all herniated discs, and based on what it sounded like, his case fell into that. It’s not a simple fix. Back issues are always scary because that’s where a lot of a hitter’s power is generated from.
Regarding Shelton, if they’re not going to move on from him right now, someone needs to have a serious sit-down with him and give him a lesson on managing a roster, because that’s where most of this team’s struggles were this year; not properly managing the bullpen when pitchers were struggling, calling up players a month later than they should have been, weird, inconsistent line-ups, etc.
My final thoughts are that this team can be good; there’s a good foundation here, and they need to build around this talented rotation. I remain optimistic right now, as I think this team is just a few good decisions away from truly being great, but it’s clearly been frustrating.
old elpaso
And your final, final thought?
sad tormented neglected mariners fan
Can you please type more your thoughts are too open ended
New New Buccoprojectory
Only a moron writer from MLB trade rumors would say ” the only flaw” in Skenes was his work volume. Well you junior high school newspaper mojo. It’s not skene’s flaw, it’s the MORON managers flaw. And then he goes on to say that Falter, Oviedo, Ortiz fit in the bac of the rotation. .nice job of reporting what everyone knows
Now you have a poster like this goof el creepo posting a stupid idiotic post. He thinks it’s sarcasm. But el creepo shows just how much of a moronic troll that he is.
Dam, why don’t these insecure bed wetting trolls just go off into a corner and die.