PITTSBURGH, June 14 -- The best pitcher in baseball throws for one of its cheapest teams, and over the next six months he will help decide whether there is a 2027 season at all.

Paul Skenes is twenty-three. He won the National League Cy Young Award by a unanimous vote, led the majors with a 1.97 ERA and struck out 216 hitters across 187 and a third innings, and for all of that he was paid out of a leaguewide bonus pool, a record sum of about $3.4 million that an established ace would treat as an insult. He cannot even file for salary arbitration until this season ends. By the cold arithmetic of the sport's pay scale he is wildly underpaid, and that is precisely why the players put him in the room where this gets settled.

The collective ...