Paul Skenes ERA climbs to 3.90 as velocity drop opens new questions for Pittsburgh Pirates

Against the backdrop of a demanding 2026 MLB season, the calculus around elite starting pitching has turned uncomfortable in Pittsburgh. Pirates ace Paul Skenes gave up five runs on seven hits Friday night in a loss to the Cincinnati Reds, his second consecutive start surrendering five earned runs, and the capstone on a July in which he allowed five or more runs in three of five outings. His ERA now stands at 3.90, a full two runs above both his 2024 and 2025 totals.

A month that rewrote the ledger

The season reads as a tale of two pitchers. Three starts in the middle of last month went well: Skenes went 3-0 with just five combined earned runs, and that stretch gave reason to hold judgment. The bookends told a different story. He lasted only four innings Friday. Back-to-back five-run games marked the first such occurrence in his career. Through 23 starts in 2026, Skenes has allowed 54 earned runs. He gave up 41 across all of last year. That gap is not a rounding error.

Velocity as the diagnostic signal

The read-through drawing sharpest attention is fastball velocity. Skenes has topped 98 miles per hour only 95 times this season. He crossed that threshold nearly 900 times in 2025 and nearly 700 times in 2024. In his last four starts, he has not reached 98 mph once. For a pitcher whose calling card was one of the liveliest fastballs in the league across two consecutive seasons, that deceleration is a sector-wide data point. When elite velocity retreats this sharply, the surrounding question is whether it reflects design or something harder to reverse.

Skenes addressed the gap last month, telling DK Pittsburgh Sports the adjustment was intentional. "It's been by design," he said. "It's nothing I've been worried about." His explanation points to a strategic recalibration. The trouble is the results in July's worst outings do not yet support that reading.

The broader cycle caveat

Pittsburgh's pre- and post-game host Dan Zangrilli offered the bluntest summary after Friday's loss. "The ace didn't ace," he said. "Far more questions than answers. For any of this to work, he has to." The macro caveat, familiar to anyone who follows young arms through their first real rough patch, is that one difficult month is a data point rather than a verdict. Three good starts sat inside this very same July. The question heading into August is whether the five-run outings reflect a design choice that has not yet clicked, or a demand environment that has caught up with a pitcher still finding his ceiling at 24.