The Chicago Cubs have featured one of the best offenses in Major League Baseball during the first month of the 2025 season, among the league’s top two teams in batting average, on-base percentage, OPS, hits and runs scored.
Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes likely won’t disagree with that after facing the Cubs’ formidable lineup on Thursday.
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Skenes got through the first four innings without allowing any runs and only one base hit despite the Cubs hitting several balls hard off him and drawing four walks. That changed drastically in the fifth inning.
Dansby Swanson led off the frame with his sixth homer of the season, jumping on a splitter that hung high in the middle of the strike zone. Despite that, Cubs batting coach Dustin Kelly was ejected for arguing with home plate umpire about Skenes getting several strike calls on pitches off the plate.
Following Nicky Lopez grounding out and an Ian Happ strikeout, Kyle Tucker and Seiya Suzuki slugged back-to-back home runs, resulting in the most homers Skenes had given up in a game during his short career. Tucker launched a fastball out over the plate into the center-field seats, while Suzuki made Skenes pay for leaving another splitter up high in the middle of the strike zone.
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Despite not scoring any runs early on, Cubs manager Craig Counsell was encouraged by the walks his batters drew.
“You’re not chasing, and [Skenes] has got to figure out something else to do,” Counsell said, via MLB.com. “He definitely went to off-speed [pitches] more today, and we did a really nice job of not swinging.
“You get the hard throwers, and you think you have to cheat to the fastball and we still laid off the off-speed,” he added. “It makes him come in the zone, makes him be a little less fine, maybe, and then you get something over the middle of the plate.”
Joey Wentz took over for Skenes in the sixth inning with the Pirates down, 3-2. Skenes threw 86 pitches, 49 for strikes, and only recorded two strikeouts, the lowest total of his career. He came into Thursday’s game with one home run allowed and four total walks for the season.
“Execution wasn’t there,” Skenes said, via the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “Kind of spraying the ball. Got away with it there for a while, and obviously it showed up a little bit in the fifth, but it is what it is. … I wasn’t super sharp today.”
The four walks — three of them to consecutive batters in the third — tied a career high, which Skenes reached twice last season (once also against the Cubs). And the home runs were the most he’d allowed in a start, surpassing the two Skenes gave up last June versus the Los Angeles Dodgers, in the fifth start of his MLB career.
With the loss, Skenes’ ERA increased to 2.73 with 41 strikeouts in 42 2/3 innings and a 3-3 record. The Cubs improved their record to 19-13, while the Pirates dropped to 12-20.
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