The Pittsburgh-sized nightmare is over. The Pirates have finally won another Paul Skenes start. They beat the Braves, 12-4, Tuesday evening with Skenes picking up the win. This ended a nine-game Pirates losing streak in Skenes starts that dated back to a victory over the Rockies on May 12 and extended into July.
Skenes wasn't even the biggest story in this one, though.
Ten of the 12 runs came via a historic barrage from Ryan O'Hearn. For real. He hit a grand slam in the first inning, a three-run homer in the third and a three-run home run in the sixth. That's three homers and 10 RBI in six innings! The Pirates had 10 runs through six innings and it was all O'Hearn.
The 10 RBI set a Pirates club record. This is an organization that has been around since 1882 and had some monster run producers like Honus Wagner, Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, Ralph Kiner and Barry Bonds. O'Hearn topped them all on Tuesday.
Here's the slam:
And here's the third blast, which ended up being historic:
He had a chance at a fourth homer in the eighth inning against a position player, but he singled instead. Still, a 4 for 5 night with three bombs and 10 RBI is one of the best individual games in MLB history.
The MLB record for RBI in a game is 12, which was set by Jim Bottomly in 1924 and tied by Mark Whiten in his four-homer game in 1993. Tony Lazzeri in 1936 and Phil Weintraub in 1944 drove home 11 runs in a game. Those are the only times in history a player has had more RBI than O'Hearn did in this one. He's now one of 17 players to get to 10 RBI in a single game. The most recent came in 2024 when Shohei Ohtani pulled off the feat.
This was the 10th time in MLB history a player hit three homers and had 10 RBI in the same game. The most recent was Ohtani in that same game.
This was also just the 25th time in Pirates history a player hit three homers in a game. It last happened Aug. 2 of last season when Liover Peguero shockingly did so. The list includes four Kiners, four Stargells, three Andrew McCutchens and two Clementes, among others.
O'Hearn has been a huge pickup for the Pirates this season. They had the worst offense in baseball last year and desperately needed a few upgrades. He's provided one. He's hitting .293/.351/.500 now with 16 homers and 61 RBI. Along with fellow newcomer Brandon Lowe and a resurgent Bryan Reynolds, the middle of the order has been solidified.
Skenes has strong outing after rough stretch
Now let's get back to Skenes. He wasn't dominant in this one, but he was good enough and his teammates provided him with run support, something that had been missing in several of those nine losses.
The final line for Skenes: 6 IP, 8 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 4 K.
As I said, he wasn't dominant. He allowed a high number of hits and didn't strike out many Atlanta hitters. He allowed hard contact eight times. Of the 31 swings on his fastball, only eight missed and six balls were hit hard. When he's going well, we'd see a lot more whiffs and fewer hard-hit balls. It should be noted that there have been concerns about a drop in spin rate and, sure enough, Skenes' spin rates on all but one of his pitches were significantly lower than season-long averages. His splitter spin rate, however, was 1,716 rpm compared to an average of 1,630. Overall, though, this concern hasn't gone away.
Still, great pitchers battle even without their best stuff and that's what he did here. He gutted through six innings and only allowed two runs. That's a 3.00 ERA, which illustrates it was a relatively successful outing.
During the nine-game drought in his starts, Skenes had a 5.36 ERA, so he was certainly at fault in a few of the outings. He had one of the worst starts of his career last time out. There was also a five-game stretch in there where he had a 2.57 ERA, and the problem was either run support (three games with two runs scored, one with one) or the bullpen (eight runs allowed on June 3). Sometimes it was a combination, such as on May 17, when he gave up five runs in five innings and got no runs of support.
Things clicked back into place Tuesday night in PNC Park. O'Hearn was the star, and one of the big takeaways was that the team finally won another game with their ace on the hill.
