Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates is one of the most dominant pitchers in Major League Baseball despite being in his first full season as a big leaguer. Not that you'd know it judging strictly by his won-loss record so far this season.
Skenes is just 4-5 on the year, despite a 2.15 ERA and 77 strikeouts in 75.1 innings of work. Five losses with a sub-3.00 ERA is awfully rare, and an indication that Skenes receives no run support every fifth day. In fact, on May 18, Skenes pitched a complete game against the Philadelphia Phillies, giving up only one run and striking out nine batters. He got tagged with the loss.
All that losing, all of that excellence without any reward, seemed like it was wearing on the young righty — and leading to speculation (which Skenes and the Pirates have both gone to great lengths to shoot down) about whether his future was in Pittsburgh or somewhere else. Which was why Wednesday had to feel like a luxury: The Pirates scored 10 total runs against the Arizona Diamondbacks (eight with Skenes on the mound) and helped their ace cruise to 6.2 scoreless innings and his first victory in a month.
And after the game, Skenes made clear just how much he appreciated the help.
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Paul Skenes doubles down on belief in Pirates core after long-awaited run support
Through Skenes’ first nine starts of the 2025 season, he received just 10 total runs of support combined. Wednesday, his team broke out and gave him eight runs to work with, and it felt like it meant more than just one more win on the ledger.
"We have a good core,” Skenes told MLB.com after the game. “We have a good opportunity to do something in Pittsburgh. We saw it last year, for a good part of the year. Just gotta keep going."
Skenes and Pittsburgh can both deny any trade rumors until they're blue in the face, and there's almost certainly no chance he's on the move any time soon. But the Pirates do need to start showing their best player something, if only to keep him believing that they can compete in the way he deserves at some point over the next few years. That means guys like Oneil Cruz and Henry Davis, each of whom played a big part in Wednesday's outburst, producing consistently and providing the outline of a contender.
As good as Skenes is, he often times does not need a ton of run support; just give him more than one to work with, and your team is in good shape. There had to be several different moments throughout his start on Wednesday where Skenes was thinking to himself, “Really guys? You couldn’t just spread these runs out across my previous starts?”
No one is expecting the Pittsburgh Pirates to display a World Series-caliber offense in the near future, but when Skenes is on the mound and he is at his best, they are expected to win those games. Hopefully for Skenes, receiving this type of run support becomes the new norm and he doesn’t have to press to be perfect in every outing to put himself in position to win.