Pirates’ Paul Skenes sends ‘scary’ warning after shutting down Padres

The Pittsburgh Pirates, off to a 7-4 start to the 2026 MLB season, have a cheat code: every five days, they have a near-guaranteed win when Paul Skenes takes the mound for them. Tuesday was Skenes night for the Pirates, and as expected, Pittsburgh brought home a convincing 7-1 victory over the San Diego Padres — with Skenes throwing 6.1 innings of one-run ball while allowing just two hits and two walks while striking out six.

One might find this hard to believe, but that was Skenes’ best start of the new campaign thus far. He was rocked hard in his opening start of the season, allowing five earned runs in 0.2 innings of work against the New York Mets and he entered proceedings on Tuesday with a 9.53 ERA in 5.2 innings of work on the season.

This only suggests that the Pirates have plenty of room to grow still, which Skenes is looking forward to.

“A long way to go. I’m excited to see what it turns into. I don’t even think we’re playing our best baseball yet, which is scary to think about. It’s gonna be a lot of fun,” Skenes said after recording his second win of the season, per Jason Mackey of MLB.com.

Is this the year the Pirates figure it out around Paul Skenes?

Skenes is clearly a generational pitching talent who’s been excellent through the first two seasons of his career. But his win-loss tally last season was rather telling; despite pitching 187.2 innings of 1.97 ERA ball in 2025 as a follow-up to his 1.96 ERA in his rookie campaign across 133.0 innings, he went just 10-10.

Now, personal win-loss tally is not the be-all, end-all stat. But that was telling of how the Pirates have lacked in their roster-building around him. Nonetheless, this promising start to the 2026 season shows that there may be plenty of hope for Pittsburgh yet — even with their ownership’s longstanding penny-pinching ways.

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