If things continue as they are, Paul Skenes will end the Major League season with more losses than wins, a small blemish alongside his excellent earned run average (2.12) and runners on base per inning (0.906). In a historical review, the only pitchers with at least 25 starts who achieved such indicators and were below .500 in the win-loss balance were Cy Young and Ed Walsh, more than a century ago.
Cy Young finished with a record of 18 wins and 19 losses, an ERA of 1.82 and a WHIP of 0.867 in 1905, while Walsh, in 1910, finished with a record of 18-20, an ERA of 1.27 and a WHIP of 0.820. Incredibly, these numbers from another era have come to life again in the 21st century with Paul Skenes, who has been phenomenal with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but has not had much luck
Of his 17 starts this season, the right-hander has allowed three runs or fewer in 15 of them. However, the Pirates have scored more than three times in just six of those games. That means Skenes is the 10th least supported pitcher in MLB by his teammates in 2025
The 23-year-old stellar shooter is lurking, who, despite his negative balance of four wins and seven losses, is among the leading candidates to win the National League Cy Young Award. Right now, he leads his circuit in ERA and WHIP, in addition to having the lowest hit (5.68) and home run (0.4) rates allowed per nine innings, and being fifth with the most strikeouts (110)
The final test of the curse
In his last outing, Milwaukee scored four runs in one inning off Paul Skenes, something that had never happened to him in his 39 starts since he made his MLB debut in 2024. With a little luck, the Brewers scored despite hitting some very weak balls.
Joey Ortiz, for example, drove in the first run with a grounder of only 35.8 miles, while Eric Haase drove in another with a double to left that came off his bat at 67.2 miles. “The only thing better than weak contact is a strikeout,” Skenes said, somewhat frustrated by his bad luck
“Once you let go of the pitch, you can’t control what they do. I wasn’t disappointed with the execution of all the pitches. There were a couple that could have been a little bit better, maybe I could have thrown another one here or there,” the right-hander added
With his performance in this last game against Milwaukee, he broke a streak of 13 consecutive games allowing three runs or less. During that streak, which began on April 14, the Pirates ace worked 83.2 innings with a 1.51 ERA, although he also failed to achieve a winning record by losing five games and winning only three
Skenes fell just one game short of matching his best streak of games with three or fewer runs allowed, set last year. Between May 11 and August 4, the right-hander went 14 games without allowing more than three runs, the fourth-longest streak in Pittsburgh’s centennial history.
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