The Pittsburgh Pirates were counting on Paul Skenes to be the stopper to their losing streak and prevent a series sweep, even though the St. Louis Cardinals are the one team that have had his number.
Skenes served up two home runs in the first inning, and the Cardinals pounded 14 hits on their way to a 10-5 win to sweep the Pirates in four games Thursday afternoon before 12,143 at PNC Park.
“It was a tough series, tough last game,” Pirates manager Don Kelly said. “It’s a tough stretch there. We got punched. We’ve got to find a way to punch back.”
It was the fifth consecutive loss for the Pirates (16-16), who dropped to .500 for the first time since April 1 and are in last place in the National League Central.
Skenes (4-2) allowed five runs (four earned) on seven hits while striking out nine without a walk on 102 pitches over five innings. He is 0-5 with a 2.95 ERA against the Cardinals, who snapped his MLB-best scoreless streak at 16 innings with a three-run first.
Cardinals leadoff batter JJ Wetherholt started the game by sending Skenes’ 2-0 fastball 391 feet into the right field seats for his seventh home run. The Mars and West Virginia alum went 6 for 16 (.375) with two doubles, two homers, three RBIs and six runs scored in the series.
“I thought he played some really good baseball,” Kelly said of Wetherholt, a 2024 first-round pick. “Got into some good counts, got some swings off, played some good defense. I thought he played well.”
Ivan Herrera then singled to third. After getting Alec Burleson looking at a called third strike on a sweeper, Skenes surrendered another homer when Jordan Walker hit a 2-1 sweeper 383 feet to left field for a two-run shot and 3-0 lead.
Although Skenes struck out Nolan Gorman and Masyn Winn to end the frame, he threw strikes on 17 of 29 pitches in the first and allowed multiple homers in one inning for only the second time in his career.
The first came almost a year ago to the day, when Dansby Swanson, Kyle Tucker and Seiya Suzuki went deep in the fifth inning of an 8-3 loss to the Chicago Cubs on May 1, 2025 at PNC Park.
“Paul Skenes is unbelievable,” Kelly said. “Sometimes — we’ve talked about it — that he’s in his third year, and the expectations are so high for him. Nobody expects more out of Paul Skenes than Paul does out of himself. I think when he has a game like today or the opener, we have to find a way to pick him up, because he picks us up all the time.”
The Cardinals increased their lead to 4-0 in the third inning when Burleson singled, advanced to second on a throwing error by shortstop Konnor Griffin and scored on Gorman’s single to right.
“Just didn’t have the best command of everything in those first couple innings,” Skenes said. “Settled in a little bit and they did a pretty good job the last few innings. Just had to grind through it.”
The Pirates cut it to 4-1 in the fourth when Bryan Reynolds hit a two-out double off the Clemente Wall, then scored when Hunter Dobbins walked the next three batters. But with the bases loaded, Griffin grounded into a forceout at third to end the rally.
Wetherholt hit a leadoff single in the fifth, advanced to second on a wild pitch and scored on a single by Burleson to give the Cardinals a 5-1 lead. The Pirates cut into that deficit in the bottom of the inning, when Jake Mangum and Oneil Cruz drew walks and Reynolds doubled to the left-field corner to drive in both runners.
Brandon Lowe hammered JoJo Romero’s 1-2 fastball 416 feet to right field for his eighth home run, cutting it to 5-4 in the seventh. With Lowe, O’Hearn (20 each) and Cruz (26), the Pirates have three players with at least 20 RBIs through March and April for the first time since it became an official statistic in 1920.
But the Cardinals answered with a five-run eighth inning. After Gorman hit a leadoff single off Isaac Mattson, Winn singled on a line drive to right that Reynolds lost in the lights, and both runners advanced when his throw missed the cutoff. Nathan Church followed by hitting one off the top of the fence in center field, driving in Gorman and Winn to give the Cardinals a 7-4 lead. Chris Devenski replaced Mattson, only for Burleson to hit a two-run single to right and Jordan Walker an RBI single to left to make it 10-4.
The Pirates rallied in the ninth, when Cruz hit a one-out single, advanced to third on Lowe’s double down the right-field line and scored on a throwing error by Walker to cut it to 10-5.
As stunning as it was to see Skenes get hit hard early, the Pirates placed the burden on themselves to provide more support for the reigning NL Cy Young winner when he’s not pitching at his best.
“It’s pretty difficult when you sit there and you’re saying ‘Oh, he struggled’ and he gave up three,” Lowe said. “It’s just kind of one of the things that we’ve been lucky to be playing behind. We’ve gotten so accustomed to him just throwing seven shutout and us going about our business. But it’s one of those things that he’s going to pick us up more often than not.
“On these days that maybe he doesn’t have the A-plus stuff he usually has, we need to come and try to pick him up. Fell a little short today, but I have no doubt that next time Paul toes that rubber, he’s going to come out with his best stuff, and we won’t be talking ‘What could we have done?’ We’ll be talking about how good he was.”