Building a gigantic Mariners-Pirates trade package involving Paul Skenes as Pittsburgh slides

Another ace starting pitcher was the last thing the Seattle Mariners needed coming into 2025. However, those circumstances have changed and there's nothing wrong with being opportunistic.

Which is to say that if the Pittsburgh Pirates open their door even a crack on Paul Skenes, the Mariners should be one of the teams that tries to take advantage.

This is a strictly speculative scenario for now, but it is a lot harder than it should be to justify the Bucs hanging onto the 2024 National League Rookie of the Year. They have made the playoffs just three times since 1992, and are now spiraling amid a 15-33 start to this season. This is also a small-market team with a long history of cheapness under owner Bob Nutting, which pretty much nixes the idea of a mega-bucks extension for Skenes.

"The truth is, there will be teams that ask about Paul Skenes at the deadline this year," ESPN Insider Jeff Passan said on The Pat McAfee Show last week, "and I don't anticipate that he's going to be moved, but there's a real argument to be made that the best thing for the Pittsburgh Pirates would be to move Paul Skenes while he has the most value."

Not many teams have the prospect capital to afford Paul Skenes, but the Mariners are an exception

To say that Skenes' trade value is massive would be understating it. He is off to a historic start to his career with a 2.12 ERA through his first 33 outings, and he's a Statcast darling, to boot. He is not yet 23 years old, and he won't be eligible for arbitration until 2027. Free agency won't call his name until after 2029.

Skenes is going to start making a lot of money once he reaches arbitration, but even then he's going to have a ton of surplus value. As it is, Baseball Trade Values estimates said value at $94.8 million, a figure worthy of a Herschel Walker-style trade.

This is assuming that the Bucs would be willing to move Skenes in merely a fair deal, which is likely a reach. At this stage, even their ever-growing pile of losses probably can't detract from their leverage to demand an overpay for Skenes. Trading him for anything less would be even more unacceptable than, well, what is already going on in Pittsburgh.

Yet as readers of this site may already be aware, the Mariners would have a better shot than most at Skenes even if the Bucs did demand an overpay. Seattle's farm system is loaded, notably placing nine prospects in MLB Pipeline's top 100. What's more, the 2025 MLB Draft will see the Mariners pick third overall with the largest bonus pool of any team.

Apart from "because they can," the other reason the Mariners should be in on Skenes concerns the long-term future of their rotation. Luis Castillo has already aged out of his prime, and Logan Gilbert (after 2027) and George Kirby (after 2028) are starting to run a little short on club control. As both of them plus Bryce Miller are currently on the injured list, a Skenes trade would super-charge the rotation for a World Series run this season and also stabilize it for years to come.

With all this in mind, here's our pitch for a Mariners-Pirates blockbuster:

• Mariners get: RHP Paul Skenes
• Pirates get: RHP Bryce Miller, SS Colt Emerson, C Harry Ford, RHP/LHP Jurrangelo Cijntje

For the Mariners, adding Skenes and going with a six-man rotation consisting of him, Castillo, Gilbert, Kirby, Miller, and Bryan Woo would be somewhere between excessive and wasteful. There would thus be some sense in Seattle sacrificing one of its incumbents in a deal for Skenes.

While Miller was having issues even before he landed on the IL with elbow inflammation, his injury is minor and it was just last year that he led all Seattle pitchers with 3.4 rWAR. As he is likewise controlled through 2029, he would more or less replace Skenes as the glue holding Pittsburgh's rotation together.

For MLB Pipeline, Emerson, Ford, and Cijntje represent the Mariners' No. 1, No. 5, and No. 8 prospects, respectively. All three are also in the top 100, and each has helium right now.

Ford has been heating up at Triple-A Tacoma, while Emerson and the switch-pitching Cijntje have likewise been doing the same for High-A Everett. The former has a .998 OPS in May, while the latter has a 1.69 ERA in three starts this month.

This is obviously a lot for the Mariners to give up, but it also represents a sort of best-case scenario. Swapping out Miller for Skenes would be quite the upgrade, naturally. Otherwise, Ford is blocked at catcher by Cal Raleigh and Emerson is at least a year behind a fellow red-hot shortstop prospect in Cole Young. And as tantalizing as Cijntje's switch-pitching talent is in the abstract, he frankly isn't all that as a left-handed pitcher.

To be sure, we'd put the chances of the Bucs actually trading Skenes during the season somewhere in the 1-in-a-million range. But if that is where the wind ultimately pushes their sails, the Mariners need to be there to hail them about Skenes.