Pirates Finally End Embarrassing Paul Skenes Streak

This start could've gone that way, as he gave up a double, a walk and an RBI-single to put the road team up 1-0, but he managed to keep the Braves from seriously scoring most of the game.

Skenes gave up eight hits, but rarely gave up hard contact and many of those hits came from balls hit outside the strike zone for some bloopers.

His second run allowed came on a changeup down and away and his first hit he gave up in the third inning, when the run scored, came on a slider down and inside.

Inducing weak contact was a big deal for Skenes, who got inning-ending double plays in the fourth inning and fifth inning.

Skenes only posted four strikeouts over 95 pitches, but he largely rendered the Braves offense ineffective.

The most important thing for Skenes was going six innings, getting a quality start and making sure the Pirates got a good outing from their ace.

"I don't think so. Again, I think throughout the past stretch, there have been a couple kind of clunky outings" Skenes said on his start. "But there has also been a lot of weak contact and I think today was kind of more of the same. Just got some runs put up earlier and made my life easy."

Offense Finally Backs Up Skenes

Skenes hadn't necessarily pitched that well, but he also didn't get good enough offensive production in his starts to get wins, even if he had performed at a higher level.

The Pirates scored 29 runs over his previous nine starts, good for 3.2 runs per outing, not really the greatest run support, even for someone like Skenes.

Pittsburgh scored nine runs in the 11-9 defeat to the Houston Astros at Daikin Park on June 3, where the bullpen gave up six runs and blew a 9-5 lead in the eighth inning.

It's been even more perplexing the Pirates had this issue in 2026, as they've been one of the better offenses in baseball.

Ryan O'Hearn made sure Skenes got the win in this one, hitting three home runs and driving in a career-high 10 RBI, becoming one of just 11 players to do so as well.

The Pirates veteran showed grace towards Skenes, acknowledging the lack of offense and defense in his starts at times, while also happy they could finally end that tough stretch for their star pitcher.

“Yeah, I mean, I think Paul’s been pitching great," O'Hearn said. "The media may say otherwise, but I think he’s pitched fine. We’ve made some mistakes behind him the last few games, maybe, and haven’t given him a ton of run support, but I think Paul’s fine. He showed that tonight. He’s one of the premier starters in the league and he’s got great stuff and he knows how to pitch.

"Can’t say enough about how valuable he is for us and tonight was cool to get him a win. I know he probably knows he hasn’t gotten a win in a while. Obviously he knows, you can’t miss it, so I know it feels good to kind of get that monkey of his back and get back in the win column. So Paul pitched great.”