The weirdest streak in baseball is dead. And it only took three home runs from one guy to bury it.
Paul Skenes took the mound Tuesday night at PNC Park against the Atlanta Braves carrying a 3.62 ERA and a bizarre piece of team history — the Pirates had lost nine straight games he started. Not because of him. Because they couldn’t score. The last time Pittsburgh won a Skenes start, somehow, was before Memorial Day.
That changed in a hurry.
Ryan O’Hearn went 4-for-5 with three homers and 10 RBIs. Let that number sink in. Ten RBIs. That’s a franchise record for the Pirates, and it’s the kind of offensive eruption that makes you wonder if somebody slipped something into the Gatorade. O’Hearn hit solo shots, two-run shots, and by the end of the night he’d personally driven in more runs than the Braves scored as a team.
Pittsburgh won 12-4 and snapped the Skenes losing streak that had become almost a running joke around baseball. Talkin’ Baseball pointed it out before the game, and then the Pirates went out and made the whole thing look silly.
Skenes wasn’t dominant — not by the standard he set winning the Cy Young last year. Six innings, eight hits, two earned runs, one walk, four strikeouts. It’s not the kind of line that usually gets you a win, but when your first baseman is having the best night of his life, it doesn’t matter. Skenes improved to 7-8 on the season, which is a record that doesn’t come close to reflecting how well he’s actually pitched.
The Pirates offense was 14-for-37 overall and 6-for-17 with runners in scoring position. That’s a team that finally looked like it remembered how to hit in the clutch. They’re on a three-game winning streak now and have taken four of their last five heading into the All-Star break. That’s not nothing for a team that’s spent most of June trying to figure out where the runs went.
The O’Hearn game
First baseman Ryan O’Hearn is not a name you expect to see next to a triple-digit RBI night. But there it is. Three homers, a single, and 10 RBIs. The last Pirates player to even get close to that number was… well, nobody in franchise history had ever driven in 10 runs in a game. It’s one of those stat lines you double-check to make sure you’re reading it right.
He hit a two-run homer in the first. A solo shot in the third. A three-run bomb in the fifth. Then he added a two-run single in the seventh just to make sure nobody forgot. The Braves pitchers went through a handful of guys trying to get him out and none of them succeeded.
Atlanta’s pitching staff just got absolutely shredded. It’s not often you see the Braves give up 12 runs, but O’Hearn and the Pirates made it look routine by the middle innings.
Skenes will take the win and the streak being over, but the story here is what happened when a good pitcher finally got some help. He’s been sitting on a 3.03 FIP, which tells you he’s been throwing the ball well enough to win most nights. The run support just never showed up. Until Tuesday.
The Pirates send Jared Jones to the mound Wednesday for the second game of this series. They’ll try to make it four in a row. If O’Hearn has even half the night he just had, they might not need much from Jones either.
Leave a Comment