Ben Cherington has a lot of reasons to be concerned about the Pittsburgh Pirates, as injuries have taken a toll on the starting lineup and weakened what he considered the deepest team of his tenure as general manager.
Paul Skenes, however, isn’t one of them.
The 2024 National League Rookie of the Year is scheduled to start Monday against the Washington Nationals, and the Pirates are hoping Skenes can stop a skid for the second time this season. He ended a four-game losing streak with a 4-2 win at the Tampa Bay Rays on April 2. The Pirates are trying to snap a three-game losing streak after being swept by the Cincinnati Reds this weekend.
Cherington isn’t worried about how Skenes will respond to allowing the most runs of his career. The 22-year-old right-hander surrendered five runs on six hits in six innings in a 5-3 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday at PNC Park, with all of the damage coming in the third and sixth innings.
“One walk, seven punchouts is a bad start that most guys would take,” Cherington said Sunday afternoon on his weekly radio show on team flagship 93.7 FM. “It speaks to the sort of level that he’s created for himself. … I think the next start is important in the sense that we want to win the game. We’re obviously confident every time he takes the mound that we’re giving ourselves a chance to win the game.
“It’s important from that standpoint, but we know who Paul Skenes is. There’s zero concern about the last start. Even within that start, there’s a lot of good things happened. He’s as accountable, as hard-working and certainly as talented as they come, so full confidence that he’s going to go out there Monday and give us a chance to win.”
An off day Thursday gave Skenes an extra day of rest between starts, preventing a showdown against Cincinnati Reds ace Hunter Greene on Sunday. That could happen more often, as Cherington said there is “no full commitment” to keeping the rotation on regular rest but rather a plan to be strategic about how to use their starting pitchers.
“We’re not cornering ourselves into a five-man or a six-man rotation all year,” Cherington said. “It’s not going to be one or the other in the extreme. We will continue to take it a turn at a time, two weeks at a time short-term, looking out, you’ll see guys go on normal rest every fifth day. With off days, sometimes guys naturally get an extra day of rest. There may be times where we strategically decide to insert someone into the rotation or do a bullpen day or something like that if we feel like we’re in a part of the season where guys may benefit from an extra day.”
Cherington said it was “not a tough call” to option rookie right-hander Thomas Harrington to Triple-A Indianapolis on Thursday because there is a belief he has development left to do in the minors. Harrington started in a 7-0 loss at Tampa Bay on April 1, then earned his first career save by pitching the final four innings of a Carmen Mlodzinski start in an 8-4 win over the Cardinals last Monday at PNC Park.
“He really did his job,” Cherington said. “He gave us that breather that we felt like we needed early in the season. Now it’s an opportunity for him to go down to Triple-A and get into a regular part of that rotation. We’re excited about that Triple-A rotation. Tommy’s going to be a really good major league pitcher. He’s still developing, still sharpening some things up. We saw the poise in that relief outing, knowing the moment, knowing the situation he was in. His job was to finish that game. He found a way to do it in some really difficult weather and helped us find a way to win that game.”
Cherington said he expects Mlodzinski to remain in the rotation after proving his stuff could hold into deeper pitch counts. That was the Pirates’ greatest concern heading into spring training, when Mlodzinski made the conversion from reliever to starter.
“That’s been the biggest thing,” Cherington said. “He got to 92 pitches in that last start against the Cardinals. His last fastballs were 95, 96 (mph). So he’s holding his stuff deep into the pitch count. We knew that would be the key for him in this role. Good for him. Really respect how hard he worked, how confident he was in himself to evolve and adjust. For now, he’s going to keep getting the ball as a starter.”
As for the closer, Cherington was noncommittal about when two-time All-Star David Bednar would return from the minors. Bednar had five strikeouts and didn’t allow a baserunner in three innings over his first three appearances at Indianapolis.
“He’s doing exactly what you’d expect him to do, which is to be really focused on what he wanted to accomplish while he’s in Triple-A,” Cherington said. “It’s all about clarity for him and confidence in his mix of pitches and attacking hitters. It’s an opportunity to pitch regularly and lock those things in.
“He’s been really effective, not surprisingly, during his time in Triple-A. Also, not surprisingly, his attitude has been fantastic. He’s been an incredible teammate to the guys there. Obviously, Indianapolis is not where he wants to be. We know the team that we want in Pittsburgh has David Bednar on it. We made the difficult choice because it felt like it gave us the best chance to give David the best chance to be the best version of himself over the course of 2025.”
“We’ll see where this goes, but he’s doing exactly what he needs to do while he’s there.”
Categories: Pirates/MLB | Sports
