Jason Mackey: I hope Paul Skenes' success didn't cause Pirates to change plans for Bubba Chandler

PITTSBURGH — Just promote him and end the speculation.

Otherwise, what the Pirates are doing with Bubba Chandler looks foolish, money-focused and almost like they regret how they handled Paul Skenes, promoting him on May 8 and giving the dominant right-hander enough runway to become the National League's Rookie of the Year.

There's a separate conversation with that move, which I'll get to shortly. But there's a part of me that's beginning to worry what happened with Skenes and also Jared Jones has made the organization take a different approach with Chandler.

How else to interpret Mike Burrows, Thomas Harrington and now Braxton Ashcraft receiving promotions before Chandler, the best pitching prospect in the sport according to MLB Pipeline?

Chandler has certainly pitched well enough to earn it, going 2-1 with a 2.27 ERA in 10 starts while walking 20 and striking out 61 in 42 2/3 innings. He's top-five in the league in pretty much every category.

The 22-year-old had one outing that wasn't elite — three earned runs allowed in 2 2/3 innings on May 7 — but aside from that has basically been unhittable.

So ... why's he not here?

The current quality of the Pirates rotation is something to consider, especially lately.

Pittsburgh's starters have a 2.07 ERA in 16 games as of Monday under new manager Don Kelly, and that group on the season ranks tied for third in MLB with 25 quality starts.

At the same time, nobody is talking about displacing Skenes, Mitch Keller, Andrew Heaney or Bailey Falter. But if Mike Burrows got a shot, why didn't Chandler?

I don't get it — and that's nothing against Burrows, who I think could be really good.

Nor is it a criticism of Harrington or Ashcraft, two pitchers who provide the Pirates with a definitive strength — good, young (and cheap) starting pitching that should be the envy of most teams.

It's just difficult to understand at this point what more Chandler — who's allowing a .178 batting average against and has an International League-best 34 strikeouts this month — has left to prove.

Don't tell me it's waiting for an opportunity, because the Pirates should always field the best 26-man team possible.

That didn't include Chandler out of spring training — and I'm OK with that.

For whatever reason, he struggled some with his command, and the Pirates are allowed to react accordingly, in this case sending Chandler to the minors for additional seasoning.

But now? If the Pirates can improve their team by piggybacking pitchers (would save the bullpen) or occasionally giving another starter an extra day, they should do that.

They certainly shouldn't just leave Chandler in Triple-A to rot until the Super 2 deadline passes — usually around the second week of June, although we won't know the exact cutoff until after the regular season — to save money on arbitration.

I also don't like delaying Chandler at this point because it looks like the Pirates are doing something squirrelly.

Either the aforementioned as it pertains to Super-2 status, or not making enough big-league starts to contend for NL Rookie of the Year.

Skenes did that, and it's fair to question how they handled that decision, as well.

Had they started Skenes in the majors, they would have earned a Prospect Promotion Incentive (PPI) pick after the first round of the MLB draft. That happens if said player wins Rookie of the Year or finishes in the top three in MVP or Cy Young voting prior to qualifying for arbitration.

It was an opportunity lost for the Pirates, but I have mixed feelings here.

On one hand, the Pirates should have viewed 2024 as a contending year. At the beginning of the season — without knowing they'd fall apart after 110 games — that meant figuring out how to best spend about 160 innings for Skenes.

(He was a little under 140 in 2023, and it's industry standard for young pitchers to increase by around 20 per year. The Pirates absolutely make dumb decisions and should be criticized for them. But this line of thinking is pervasive around baseball.)

The Pirates avoided a Stephen Strasburg-style shutdown by limiting Skenes' innings in Triple-A to start.

But I can also understand the argument for starting him with the big club, having a lot of five-inning outings (32 starts at five innings a pop equals 160 innings) and snagging what would be an important team-building pick.

I worry more about the Pirates reacting to what they did with Jones and Skenes and taking it out on Chandler, who many scouts will tell you is damn close to Skenes in terms of velocity, stuff and execution.

For Jones, the Pirates doing something outside of their norm and keeping him on the 2024 opening day roster (probably indirectly) resulted in serious elbow issues and surgery that will keep him out until later next season.

Skenes, because he was promoted early enough, pitched so well that he earned a year of service time, anyway.

Are the Pirates trying to avoid that happening for a second straight season? Nobody will ever admit to it, but I know one way of disproving the narrative: Promote the kid. He certainly has earned it.

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