Paul Skenes was fabulous in a bounce back start as he dominated the Diamondbacks over 8.0 innings with just two hits allowed. Brandon Lowe provided the only offense with a solo home run in the first inning. Jim and Neil broke Skenes’ performance down on the NS9 Postgame Show powered by Primanti’s Bros. You can watch/listen here…
Here’s my three takeaways from this one…
Paul Skenes Oh My
Besides Opening Day and Skenes last start against the dreaded Cardinals, Skenes other six starts he’s allowed zero or one run in all six of those starts. His ERA drops to 2.36 on the season and he’s been crazy good. Skenes has stated that he wants to be more efficient and pitch deeper into games and mission accomplished because he’s doing that this season and was his most efficient Wednesday night as he finished with 97 pitches through 8.0 innings of work. Could he have pitched the 9th? Absolutely, I think Skenes could have pitched the 9th, 10th and 11th and I’m not sure the Diamondbacks would have had an answer for him, but I understand there really wasn’t a need to push him to go 9 in this game. Save it for a game where he has the no-hitter intact, and folks it’s coming sooner or later. It’s completely irrational and absurd to write that, but Paul Skenes is that dude and he’s going to get one eventually…probably multiple in his career.
He only needed the one run and he now has five wins on the season. Every Skenes start is huge for this team and the pressure to win them and despite the bats struggling, Skenes wasn’t going to lose this one. I’m running out of words to describe Skenes and how great of a pitcher he is, but it’s just so much fun to watch greatness like that pitch for your team every fifth day.
Offense in a 3-Game Funk
Since the Pirates 17-run outburst last weekend against the Reds, the bats have gone into a little bit of a funk. A three-game funk so far at least. They scored and won 1-0 on Sunday to sweep the Reds, were shutout Tuesday in Arizona and then 1-0 win Wednesday night. I wouldn’t say I’m concerned about the offense yet, but they need to be better getting runs in. They had seven hits in this game and left eight on base. They had a golden opportunity to get a second run in early in this game as Spencer Horwitz hit a leadoff triple. Konnor Griffin struck out, Henry Davis walks and then Oneil Cruz grounded it to first base, D-Backs throw home and Horwitz going on contact is dead to rights and gets into a rundown, but he didn’t take up enough time in the rundown, gets tagged out and then they throw to third and get Davis who’s out going to third. That just can’t happen. Get that run in or at the very least, Horwitz has to do a better job in the rundown to allow the runner to get to third safely. I thought we’d regret not getting that run in, but Skenes and Gregory Soto were too good to allow that to happen.
BRey 1,000 Hits Club
Bryan Reynolds came into this game sitting at 998 hits for his career. He singled in the first inning and then singled in the third inning for the 1,000th hit of his 8-year career. Kudos to Reynolds on the mark. There’s a lot of hitters that make the Major Leagues, but only a exclusive group makes it far enough to record that many hits. According to Baseball Almanac, it’s roughly only 5.95% of all MLB hitters reach 1,000 hits. So job well done, BRey. And then there’s this note from Danny Demilio:
Talk about Pirates royalty. The four players he joined Wednesday night is like the Pirates Mt. Rushmore of hitters. Reynolds had a down year in 2025 with a 99 OPS+, but so far this season he’s at 129 OPS+ and already had produced half of the bWAR (0.7) in 37 games that he recorded last year (1.4). He’s batted third in every one of his starts and has benefited from the acquisitions of Lowe and Ryan O’Hearn and it’s been great to see him bounce back and take advantage of a little lineup protection.
Leave a Reply