Paul Skenes warns 2025 is ‘wasted year’ for Pirates if they don’t learn

With the Pirates barreling toward a 90-plus-loss season, their ace is getting candid about what they should learn from 2025.

Paul Skenes, who leads MLB with a 2.03 ERA, was an All-Star for the second time and is likely headed toward his first National League Cy Young Award this year, but as a team, the Pirates will miss the playoffs once again, a place they haven’t been since the 2015 wild-card game.

Skenes, speaking to reporters on Friday, explained that Pittsburgh must take key lessons from the organization’s seventh straight losing campaign.

“This is a wasted year if we don’t learn what we need to do and we don’t know why we didn’t go out there and do what we wanted to do,” the right-handed ace said. “If those things happen, then it’s a wasted year, in my opinion. I don’t think that’s happening. I think — individually, as a team and as an organization — we know the adjustments we need to make. Now, we’ve just got to do them.”

Skenes leads a starting rotation that ranks fifth in the majors with a 3.80 ERA, but the team’s offense hasn’t supplied enough support, as they rank dead last in MLB in runs, home runs and OPS.

While the 23-year-old out of LSU believes the team — which ranks as 24th in MLB payroll — can add pieces from the outside to get better, he said the onus ultimately falls on the current crop of Pirates who will be back in 2026.

To Skenes, the time is now to get better.

“There’s room to get better in this locker room,” he said. “We just need to do it. I’m sure we’ll get some pieces and do all that, but my mind right now is ‘What can we do within the locker room to get better, now and for next year?’ There’s urgency to it, and we need to understand that and act on it.”