Pat McAfee's painfully accurate Pirates joke didn't make Paul Skenes laugh

If Bob Nutting and the Pirates' front office had a CIA-esque watchlist, analyst Pat McAfee would probably be on it. When Jeff Passan was loudly advocating for the Pirates to trade Paul Skenes, he stopped by McAfee's show and reiterated his argument, and McAfee vehemently agreed with all of his points.

McAfee was also the master of ceremonies throughout All-Star festivities, moderating player Q&As and introducing the Home Run Derby. When it was Skenes' turn on Monday, he was introduced with a joke that not only fell flat with the audience but with Skenes himself: "The first NL pitcher to start back-to-back years. He's the savior of Pittsburgh, three-four years from now."

Most videos of the intro pan slowly over to Skenes, who is — at best — smiling politely, but definitely not losing his mind over that joke.

Skenes has probably heard it all at this point. He might even privately agree that the Pirates are wasting his first years in the majors, but he was never going to laugh at that, lest he end up on the watchlist right alongside McAfee and Passan.

All-Star Game emcee Pat McAfee called Paul Skenes the Pirates' "savior three, four years from now"

Nevertheless, Skenes continued to make Pirates fans proud with this second All-Star Game start, when he took down Tigers Gleyber Torres and Riley Greene and AL MVP favorite Aaron Judge down with a 1-2-3 top of the first in a performance even better than last year's.

The NL was quick to provide run support at the bottom, when Ketel Marte drove in Shohei Ohtani and Ronald Acuña Jr. with an RBI double off of Tarik Skubal. It was the only inning of work Skenes would get, but he was throwing fireballs, with his fastball topping out at 100.4 MPH.

The Pirates don't need anymore evidence that they should extend Skenes, but fans might hope that their notorious awfulness making it to the national stage like this could embarrass them into taking action. We all know that's a very distant possibility, but we need something to hang onto.

Skenes is going to keep being an All-Star, keep getting Cy Young votes, and so on, maybe throughout the rest of his tenure in Pittsburgh, and ownership and the front office is going to keep getting called out like this if the team continues to flail. If they actually want to quiet all that noise, maybe they should actually do something about it.