The Pittsburgh Pirates may need a Paul Skenes downside.
Due to their 10-6 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday night time, the Pirates have now misplaced 9 consecutive Skenes begins and are solely 6-12 within the 18 video games he has began this season.
Maybe much more astonishing is the truth that they’re considerably higher (37-32) within the video games he doesn’t begin.
Over the primary two years of his profession, and even by his first 10 begins this season, it could have been straightforward to write down that off because the Pirates not doing sufficient to assist him. At occasions, that has been the case. However it’s reaching a degree now the place Skenes has to begin proudly owning not solely a few of that failure, however the majority of it.
One thing could be very, very incorrect with him.
One thing seems damaged.
Paul Skenes is just not pitching properly proper now
Skenes was lifted after simply 4 innings on Wednesday night time, permitting eight runs, together with seven earned, to boost his ERA for the season to three.62.
Whereas a 3.62 ERA may be a superbly acceptable quantity for 90 to 95% of the pitchers in Main League Baseball, Skenes has set a considerably larger commonplace for himself and entered this season with a 1.98 ERA over his first two seasons within the league.
Even by the primary quarter of this season, he was below 2.00 and searching as dominant as ever.
However someday round mid-Might, every thing dramatically modified for him, and he has not but been in a position to get himself again on observe.
In the course of the staff’s nine-game dropping streak in his begins, Skenes has an ERA of 5.44 and has not appeared something near dominant. Even worse, even within the begins the place he hasn’t given up a whole lot of runs, every thing has a chore for him on the mound.
A lot has been made a few drop in his fastball velocity this season, and whereas that could be a potential pink flag, it’s removed from the one situation dealing with him proper now.
His command has escaped him, whereas none of his offspeed and breaking pitches have the identical sharpness or effectiveness that they did over his first two years and the primary 10 begins of this season. His pitch counts are getting inflated early in video games, he’s struggling to place hitters away (even when he does get strikeouts), and he constantly finds himself in three-ball counts.
There have been some points behind the Pirates’ constantly subpar protection.
That was once more true on Wednesday night time when third baseman Nick Gonzales botched a possible inning-ending double play in what was nonetheless a scoreless recreation, opening the floodgates for a five-run second inning.
However even with that being the case, Skenes was nonetheless as much as 40 pitches at that time and had solely recorded 4 outs within the recreation. That additionally doesn’t excuse the truth that he proceeded to surrender a three-run residence run, after which three extra runs over the subsequent two innings. He used to have the ability to pitch by these moments.
There is no such thing as a scarcity of theories on what has occurred to him.
Is it a possible damage inflicting the drop in velocity and lack of command?
Did new pitching coach Invoice Murphy change one thing mechanically or along with his strategy?
Is it so simple as the league lastly making an adjustment and him needing to regulate again?
Is it associated to his pitching within the World Baseball Traditional earlier than the season?
Or might it doubtlessly be slightly little bit of every thing all mixed?
Ultimately, the why and the how don’t matter as a lot because the outcomes. In what has been an entire 180 from the 2025 season, when their offense failed a top-tier pitching employees, the Pirates have one in every of Main League Baseball’s finest offenses in 2026 and are more likely to miss the playoffs as a result of a badly underperforming pitching employees. Proper now, the reigning Nationwide League Cy Younger Award winner is on the high of the listing.
