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Star Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes isn't often touched up the way he was Tuesday by the Cardinals. In fact, he basically never is and there are stats to back up that assertion.
Skenes' final line: 6 IP, 6 H, 5 ER, 1 BB, 7 K
He had a 1.46 ERA through two starts entering the game in 2025 and last season posted a 1.96 ERA in 23 starts. In his 25 career starts before Tuesday, he had allowed zero earned runs eight times, one earned run seven times, two earned runs six times, three earned runs twice and four earned runs once. That was it.
Not only that, he had never given up five earned runs in one game in the minors or in college. Given his absurdly high level of ability, we'll go ahead and guess he wasn't coughing up five runs in a high school varsity game or any level below that, either.
This means it's fair to surmise that Tuesday night marked the worst outing of Skenes' life. The funny thing is, he still wasn't entirely terrible. He struck out seven against just one walk, good for a 1.17 WHIP for the game. That's perfectly adequate. He finished six innings instead of being sent to the showers after something like 1 ⅔.
All this is to say that while it was a bad outing by Skenes' standards, it really wasn't a catastrophe and by the standards of most pitchers, it wasn't even all that bad. Skenes himself doesn't sound too worried about it.
"They just got to a couple pitches," Skenes said (via MLB.com). "It's not like they hit the ball into the river or anything like that. They just found some holes and I got behind in some counts and kind of let them get good swings off and they found holes. Not going to sweat it. It is what it is."
The damage came in two different innings, the third and sixth. In the top of the third, it went single, single, strikeout, triple, strikeout, single to plate the three runs. He still had put up zeroes in four of the five innings before entering the sixth. In the sixth, the Cardinals pulled off a double, walk, single, strikeout and RBI groundout to plate the two runs.
Skenes also got 1-2-3 innings in the first, third and fifth innings.
Hardly a disaster.
"We haven't seen a lot of rough ones," Pirates manager Derek Shelton said (via MLB.com). "But everything that has been on his plate, he's handled very well. I expect him to come out the next time and be what we expect."
There's every reason to agree with Shelton here. Skenes hasn't had to bounce back from an outing like this before because he's never had an outing like this, and yet, it still wasn't even that bad. Good enough, in fact, to keep him as the National League Cy Young favorite (+200, per FanDuel). Odds are he'll be just fine.
