Kyle Tucker to Dodgers is a grim preview of how Paul Skenes’ Pirates story will end

Earlier this week, Kyle Tucker didn’t just sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He wrote the ending to Paul Skenes’ Pittsburgh Pirates story.

Four years. Two hundred and forty million dollars. Sixty million per season. Not for a once-in-a-generation unicorn. Not for an MVP who changed the sport. Just for a star in his prime — a great one, yes, but not a mythical one.

That’s the new price of entry. And that number should feel haunting in Pittsburgh –– because Paul Skenes is already better than that.

Skenes is louder. He’s more marketable. He’s more electric. He’s the kind of pitcher who sells jerseys, fills seats, changes the way a franchise is perceived. He is everything this city has been waiting for.

Which is why the Tucker deal feels less like a Dodgers headline and more like a prophecy.

This is how it ends.

The Pirates will build around Skenes. They’ll market him. They’ll ride him. They’ll ask him to carry a generation of hope. He will become the face of baseball in Pittsburgh in a way no one has since Andrew McCutchen in his prime. And then, when the clock runs out, the sport will remind us what it is.

Dodgers' Kyle Tucker deal makes Paul Skenes' Pittsburgh exit feel inevitable

The Pirates simply cannot exist in a world where $60 million per year is the baseline. They can’t operate in an environment where the Dodgers casually write checks that exceed their entire payroll for a single player. They can’t play a game where “keeping your superstar” is a luxury reserved for five franchises.

So the choices will be familiar. And cruel. Either Skenes will be traded before the bill comes due — spun into prospects, framed as “maximizing value,” sold as the responsible thing — or he will walk. He will hit free agency. And he will end up exactly where Tucker just did: Los Angeles.

Because that’s how baseball works now. Stars don’t just leave small markets. They are absorbed by the same gravitational force. Every path leads west. Every bidding war ends in Dodger blue.

It won’t be because the Pirates didn’t try. They did this winter. They added Brandon Lowe. Ryan O’Hearn. Gregory Soto. Jhostynxon Garcia. They made real, tangible upgrades. They acted like a team that wants to win, and it still won't end up mattering. Because effort in Pittsburgh exists on a different plane than ambition in Los Angeles.

Skenes is going to become everything this franchise dreams about. He’s going to dominate. He’s going to matter. He’s going to make PNC Park feel alive again. And unless something in this sport fundamentally changes, he’s also going to leave.

That’s not cynicism. It's arithmetic.

Tucker and the Dodgers just told every fan in a market like Pittsburgh exactly what the ceiling is. Not competitively, but existentially.

You can develop the star, you can cherish him, and you can build around him. You just can’t keep him.

And when Skenes eventually walks into Dodger Stadium wearing someone else’s colors, it won’t feel like betrayal. It will feel like gravity. Like inevitability. Like the ending we all saw coming the moment baseball decided that $60 million a year is just the cost of doing business.

So, Tucker didn’t just sign a contract. He set the price on Skenes’ goodbye.