Cy Gone

BY KEVIN KERNAN

The scam is in full swing.

Soon after Paul Skenes became the unanimous National League Cy Young Award winner, the cheapskate Pirates announced that on April 18th against the Rays, certain to be a beautiful day in Pittsburgh, the Pirates will be handing out Paul Skenes Cy Young Bobbleheads.

Thanks for the memories, Pirates owner Bob Nutting.

You know how this is going to turn out. Nutting will get a sellout that day against the Rays — after all, Pirates vs. Rays is must-see baseball — and then at some point in the future, the Pirates will trade Paul Skenes just like they traded Gerrit Cole, who would eventually win a Cy Young Award with the Yankees in 2023.

The Pirates are too cheap to have superstars so while Skenes is pitching for the Yankees or Dodgers one day, with Livvy Dunne there to meet him after games and pose for a terrific selfie, Pirate fans will at least have that Paul Skenes Bobblehead on their shelf.

When fans yell “Go Pirates’’ it just means they know their best pitcher will go somewhere else. In his first full season Skenes pitched to a 1.97 ERA and with 216 strikeouts to earn that Cy Young.

This all hit me the other night as I was watching a grainy film of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series on YouTube. In that game the Pirates shocked the Yankees, beating them 10-9 on a walk-off home run by Bill Mazeroski, a blast I watched live on TV back on October 13, 1960 at exactly 3:36 in the afternoon.

Pirates fans were delirious with joy that day at Forbes Field – and 50 years later in a tribute to that team, MLB Network celebrated that game at the Byham Theater in Pittsburgh with many of the surviving members of that Pirates team in attendance. In that Game 7, no one from the Pirates or Yankees struck out.

Fifty years later those players were still treated like royalty by Pittsburgh fans.

Now, Pirates fans are treated like dirt. These Pirates have had seven straight losing seasons —and I mean losing. In Skenes’ first two seasons the Pirates lost 86 games and 91 games. The fans have a great ballpark in PNC Park, and they have Skenes, but they don’t have much else. The Pirates offense is dreadful.

You have to pay hitters and Bob Nutting does not pay. The 2025 Pirates were last in home runs (117), slugging (.350), OPS (.655), runs scored (583) and 28th in batting average at .231. It is a wonder that Skenes managed to win 10 games.

But that is just half of The Story, this Cy Young Story.

I bring this all up because over in the American League, lefty Tarik Skubal won his second straight AL Cy Young Award, the first Tiger pitcher to win back-to-back Cy Young Awards since Denny McLain turned the trick in 1968-69.

To me, Tigers fans are much like Pirates fans. They are salt of the earth fans, generations of families who live and die with their team. At least Skubal was able to carry the Tigers to the postseason each of the last two years, although, he never should have been taken out of the deciding ALDS Game 5 last month, a 3-2 loss to the Mariners, after six innings and 99 pitches. The Dodgers Yoshinobu Yamamoto would later show the value of pushing your starter.

What does it say about the state of baseball where Paul Skenes, NL Rookie of the Year in 2024 and unanimous NL Cy Young Award winner in 2025 and Tarik Skubal, the Tigers first back-to-back Cy Young winner in 56 years, will not stay with their teams?

And with his back-to-back Cy Young Awards, Skubal was the center of trade talk of the just completed GM Meetings in Las Vegas – or as I like to call those meetings, The Rich Get Richer Meetings because that is where the groundwork is often done where cheap teams trade away top assets to rich teams.

At this point, there is no excuse for the Tigers having not locked up Skubal two years ago to a long-term monster contract; he is a free agent after the 2026 season. The Tigers could see where this was heading with the success of the last two seasons. Tigers fans were coming back to Comerica Park because the team was winning. They were winning because Tarik Skubal is the ace of aces in the American League two years running. Yet the Tigers have not made a serious attempt to sign their ace to a forever contract. Reports have it they only offered a four-year, $80 million dollar deal.

Scott Boras is his agent, so that makes it tough, if the team wants to portray it as tough. The truth is Skubal probably would have signed a long-term deal to stay in Detroit if one were truly offered. It all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Tigers because they did not make the right offer. And just like the Pirates fans who will see Paul Skenes walk away someday — Skenes is a free agent after the 2029 season — the reality for Tigers fan is that day is fast approaching for Tarik Skubal to walk away.

What does it say about the state of baseball where Paul Skenes, NL Rookie of the Year in 2024 and unanimous NL Cy Young Award winner in 2025 and Tarik Skubal, the Tigers first back-to-back Cy Young winner in 56 years, will not stay with their teams?

The Nerds will tell you they are looking for that lockdown forever starter, and some teams like the Dodgers will go to Japan and pay $325 million for such a pitcher while the Yankees paid $324 million for Cole; while other teams, even though they came up with Skenes and Skubal, will eventually get rid of them.

Baseball cannot continue down this path. The owners of teams like the Pirates and Tigers have to do better. Every team’s worth has skyrocketed, but some teams continue to treat their fans as second-class fans.

When these trades are eventually made you will hear garbage from team bosses that they now have long-term sustainability.

When you hear that phrase, “long-term sustainability,’’ you know you are in trouble as a fan. The Pirates’ two previous Cy Young winners were Doug Drabek in 1990 and Vernon (Deacon) Law back in 1960.

When that 1960 Game 7  game film was discovered late in 2009 — the only copy of that game to exist  — in the wine cellar of Bing Crosby, a part-owner of the Pirates and then shown in November the next year — the 50th anniversary of the World Championship — you could see in the faces of the fans in that theater and in the former Pirates there what that championship meant to the City of Pittsburgh.

One person in attendance was the great Franco Harris, who passed away three years ago. Harris was a four-time Super Bowl Champion and scored on the “Immaculate Reception’’ for the Steelers. He looked like a kid in a candy store sitting behind those Pirates and when shortstop Dick Groat pointed out how wonderful it was to see Franco Harris in the audience, Harris beamed. He was 10 years old again when Groat’s Pirates won that World Series against the mighty Yankees. Harris grew up in New Jersey, so I’m guessing he was a Yankees fan, but after spending a football career in Pittsburgh, he knew what that championship meant to Yinzers.

The City of Pittsburgh should be so excited about Skenes having won the Cy Young, but instead they know the clock is ticking faster and recently Randy Miller reported that Skenes has told friends on the Pirates that he would love to be a Yankee someday. While the Pirates had the lowest slugging percentage in baseball at .350, the Yankees had the highest at .455. While the Pirates had the lowest OPS in baseball at .655, the Yankees had the highest at .787. While the Pirates had the fewest home runs in baseball with 117, the Yankees had the most in 2025 with 274.

All pitchers love run support. Especially Cy Young pitchers. After winning the Cy Young, Skenes tried to turn down the heat on all that Yankee talk, saying, “My goal is to win with the Pirates.’’

He has to say that, but he knows it is only a matter of time. The Yankees, for their part, can’t mess this up like they messed up the Gerrit Cole trade, allowing Pittsburgh to trade Cole to the Astros. In that January 13, 2018 trade this is all the Pirates received for Cole: Michael Feliz, Jason Martin, Colin Moran and Joe Musgrave.

You mean to tell me the Yankees could not come up with a better package?

This Story is about the Pirates and Tigers having Cy Young Award winners who will be Cy Gones someday, probably sooner than later.

That is a stain on the ownership of the Pirates and Tigers and on all of baseball.

Fans deserve to see their superstar pitchers remain with their teams. In the NFL, MVP QB Josh Allen can remain in Buffalo for his career.

Maybe Skubal will wind up a Yankee. Either way Detroit has already dealt itself a losing hand with their ace.

The same losing Skenes hand in Pittsburgh. With Bob Nutting’s Pirates all the fans figure to wind up with is a Paul Skenes Cy Young Bobblehead, if they are lucky. But at least Nutting will get a rare April sellout and make even more money.