'We have buy-in': Pirates' Paul Skenes aims to be catalyst in creating a championship culture

Before the arrival of Paul Skenes, the expectation around the Pittsburgh Pirates was that the players locked into long-term contracts would take on a leadership role in the locker room.

After starting for the National League in the All-Star Game, winning NL Rookie of the Year honors and finishing third in NL Cy Young voting last season, Skenes already might have priced himself out of an extension with the Pirates.

“I don’t know,” Skenes said. “I haven’t given it too much thought.”

What the 22-year-old right-handed pitcher has given considerable thought about is his role in helping create a championship clubhouse culture, something he expects to change this season.

If the Pirates are to improve after back-to-back 76-win seasons, it’s going to start internally. Skenes made his major league debut last May, less than a year after leading LSU to the College World Series championship and being selected No. 1 overall in the MLB Draft.

Now that he’s no longer a rookie, Skenes made it clear that he’s no longer taking a backseat to veterans when it comes to speaking his mind. Asked if he believes he has earned that agency, Skenes answered in the affirmative but couldn’t quite describe how it will happen.

“I don’t know what the character of that will be, but I’ll have probably a little more say so,” Skenes said. “Obviously, having established myself a little bit — but there’s still a long way to go — I’m not going to overstep. But winning is winning. We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do to make it happen.”

Pirates All-Star and NL ROY Paul Skenes expects the clubhouse culture to change this season: “We have buy-in.” pic.twitter.com/URfWjTHFE5

— Kevin Gorman (@KevinGormanPGH) January 19, 2025

Skenes (11-3, 1.96 ERA/0.95 WHIP) established just how much he gives the Pirates their best chance to win, as they had a .652 winning percentage in his 23 starts and .439 in games he didn’t pitch. Skenes wants the Pirates to find a middle ground, which would catapult them into contenders.

“I think we have a responsibility to do that (for) the city and within the organization, too,” Skenes said. “I think we owe it to them. You can say whatever you want about the acquisitions and all that, but we need to play better, too. I don’t know what the number of games was — that might be something that I honestly look into over the course of the next month, going into spring training — in terms of games we should have won that we didn’t. But it was more than 10 last year, I know that.”

Then Skenes showed a semblance of how he could become more outspoken, rattling off the names of teams that reached the postseason while the Pirates “were watching from home because we (gave) those games away.”

“We’re going to have our opportunities to win, so we have to take advantage of it,” Skenes said. “It’s not a complicated thing. It’s simple, but it’s very difficult to do. It’s probably a real thing. If you go out and sign the Ohtanis, maybe it becomes a little bit easier — he’s Ohtani for a reason — but there’s no reason we can’t play fundamental baseball and execute at a very high level without having players like that. It’s not a complicated game.”

That attitude has had a ripple effect on Pirates veterans. Where All-Star outfielder Bryan Reynolds, Gold Glove third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes and Opening Day starter Mitch Keller signed long-term contracts with the Pirates, their reserved natures make them appear to be reluctant leaders when it comes to speaking up when the team needs a jolt.

And the team’s most accomplished player, five-time All-Star and 2013 NL MVP Andrew McCutchen, said that “sometimes you have to force things because you do it for the greater good of the team.”

The 38-year-old McCutchen vowed to be more outspoken this season but said it would be more helpful if all of the Pirates addressed concerns instead of relying on just one or two players.

“I’m not a guy who’s like, ‘Let me speak because I’m a veteran. I was a part of playoff runs. Everyone knows me.’ I’m not going to be a guy who should speak because of that,” McCutchen said. “I speak because I feel it here, then I say something because I know that people will listen.

“Now, should I do that more? Probably. I probably should force that more, times where I don’t really want to. ‘No, do it.’ That’s for me. But if we can do it as a whole, it can be anybody from myself to Jared Jones, speak up. We come in, we need to do it together, as a whole. Don’t depend on the person next to you to say something. Let’s all say it together, and we’ll help each other.”

The soft-spoken Reynolds allowed that he needs to become more assertive in his leadership role, though he warned that he’s not about to change and become someone who screams and hollers.

“Everybody should come into the season expecting to win and expecting to change the narrative and have a different season than we’ve had in the past,” Reynolds said. “So I think everybody should come in ready to win, expect that and do what it takes to do it.”

That’s where Skenes sees a difference in the Pirates and why he has taken it upon himself to search for ways to improve the clubhouse culture in the hopes that it has a direct correlation to their performance on the field.

“We have buy-in. In the short time I’ve been here, we’ve had buy-in,” Skenes said. “There are a lot of guys — and guys that, frankly, I wouldn’t have expected it from — talking about changing some things in the clubhouse and that kind of thing. Because we had a good clubhouse last year, but it wasn’t anything crazy.

“The nature of pro locker rooms compared to college locker rooms is just going to be different, so I learned a lot about how a pro locker room is last year. But I’ve also learned, the experience of (playing) last year and talking to guys this offseason who have won World Series and played for 15 years in The Show, that kind of thing, learned about how a locker room should be, too. So we’re going to work on getting it there. And we’ve started already.”