The Pirates bats were quiet all night and then looked like they tied the game in the 9th inning only to have the call overturned and lose on baserunner interference 2-1 to the Rockies. Paul Skenes struggled with control early but settled in nicely and finished with a strong six innings, just four hits allowed, two runs and eight strikeouts. DiNardo and Jim broke this game down on the NS9 Postgame Show powered by Primanti’s Bros. You can watch/listen here:

Here’s my 3 takeaways from this one:

Pirates Waste Another Paul Skenes Start

I get it, Paul Skenes once again didn’t look like the Skenes we’ve seen the past two years. He struggled with control at times, gave up a run as soon as the Pirates had the lead and wasn’t very efficient for most of the night. He still gave you six innings, just four hits, two runs with eight strikeouts. That kind of outing from your starting pitcher in Coors Field should give you an easy win. But it didn’t Saturday night. And now the Pirates are 38-33 in three seasons of Paul Skenes starts. For a pitcher that has a career 2.15 ERA in those 71 starts, that record is hard to believe. What’s even more frustrating is the Pirates were 32-23 in Paul Skenes starts the past two years when their offense was horrible. This season, their offense is actually good, Paul Skenes is still good (2.86 ERA) and the Pirates are 6-10 in his starts this season. It’s unacceptable. It’s either the bats, the defense or the bullpen letting him down. Saturday, it was the defense and the bats that were the culprits. If the Pirates are going to do anything and compete for a wildcard spot this season, they have to have a better record in Skenes starts.

Pirates Are Missing Cruz and Konnor in the Lineup

This offense is certainly better than anything we’ve seen the past 10 years, but they’ll have games like the other night against the A’s where they’re scoring 12 runs on 15+ hits and then get shut down to Kyle Freeland and Tomoyuki Sugano at Coors Field. Sugano came in with the lowest K/9 (5.0) in the MLB with a minimum of 60 innings and he struck out two in the first inning and finished with five in six innings. There were just so many uncompetitive at-bats in this loss against him. They’ve now scored just four runs in two games at Coors Field and are on the verge of being swept Sunday afternoon. Jake Mangum, Jared Triolo and Tyler Callihan are playing so much with the injuries to Oneil Cruz and Konnor Griffin. Yes, this offense is among the top 5 in a lot of offensive categories this season, but they sure do disappear against middle-of-the-road pitchers far too often. They are missing Cruz and Griffin badly, but they just have to be better on a game-to-game basis.

This Team Loses in the Weirdest Ways

The Pirates have lost games in some weird ways. Last year at Coors, we watched that absurd game where they lost 17-16 and blew a big lead. This year they find a way to lose a 2-1 game where they do nothing all game, then load the bases with one out, think you tie it up and then lose on a controversial baserunner interference call. It shouldn’t have even gotten to that situation if they would have just hit and scored a couple runs off bad Rockies pitchers, but they couldn’t do it. It’s either bad defense or blown saves and now thrown in interference calls when you think they had already tied the game up.

Now they can possibly be swept Sunday to the last-place Rockies. The worst team in the National League. You can’t lose these games. You can’t lose like this, but every day it’s something new for this Pirates team who now falls to 38-39. You can’t keep losing games like this to bad teams and act like they’re a postseason contender. This team is more talented, but overall they’re just not there yet. This sounds so cliché, but they need to learn how to win games now.