Paul Skenes tries to lift skidding Pirates against MLB's best in Tigers

Reuters

3 days ago

July 21 - Coming off his second consecutive start in the All-Star Game, Pirates ace Paul Skenes will oppose Detroit Tigers right-hander Jack Flaherty as he tries to get his squad back on track on Monday night in Pittsburgh.
Skenes (4-8, 2.01 ERA) will aim to continue his bid for the National League's Cy Young Award while trying to pull Pittsburgh out of its worst stretch of this season. The Pirates have lost three in a row since the All-Star break and 11 of their past 12 games.
The Tigers still own the best record in the majors entering Monday's game with 60 wins, but they have been struggling of late. Detroit's 2-1 victory at Texas on Sunday night snapped a season-worst six-game losing streak. But the Tigers scored only three runs in the three-game series against the Rangers and nearly squandered another strong start from All-Star ace Tarik Skubal.
Detroit will turn to Flaherty (5-9, 4.65), who is familiar with the Pirates from his days pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals and had plenty of success against them in his career. Flaherty is 10-1 with a 2.75 ERA in 16 career starts and 17 appearances overall against Pittsburgh.
But the Tigers need to get Flaherty going again, as he has not picked up a win since June 8. In his most recent start on July 13 against Seattle, Flaherty allowed two runs on four hits and two walks with seven strikeouts over five innings.
"You kind of stumble into the (All-Star) break a bit, however you want to put it," Flaherty said after getting a no-decision against the Mariners. "Myself, I could have thrown a bit better in the first half, but you wipe the slate clean and move forward."
Skenes pitched a scoreless first inning for the National League this past Tuesday, which included strikeouts of two Detroit All-Stars, Gleyber Torres and Riley Greene to lead off the game.
Skenes will now turn his attention to winning a Cy Young while his team looks for any positives down the stretch of what appears to be another losing season. Skenes, who finished third in the Cy Young voting during his NL Rookie of the Year season last year, has struck out 131 batters in 121 innings.
The Pirates have been keeping an eye on his innings as Skenes hasn't pitched more than five in his past four starts.
"That's why we're doing these shorter starts -- hopefully to set me up well to come out strong in the second half and continue to take on volume," Skenes said after his most recent outing on July 11 when he allowed two runs on five hits and struck out six over five innings in a 2-1 loss to the Minnesota Twins.
Although Detroit is struggling to produce runs of late, Skenes has faced a lack of run support for most of the 2025 season when he's been on the mound. Skenes is tied with teammate Mitch Keller for the least run support of any NL regular starting pitcher with 2.54 runs per game, according to Screwball.AI.
Detroit shortstop Javier Baez exited Sunday's game in the sixth inning. Tigers manager A.J. Hinch didn't elaborate much as to why, but told reporters after the game that Baez "wasn't feeling right."
--Field Level Media