The Pittsburgh Pirates will take aim at their fifth victory in six games when they face the Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday afternoon in the finale of a three-game series at Phoenix.
The Pirates and Diamondbacks have split the first two games of the set. Arizona rolled to a 9-0 victory on Tuesday before Paul Skenes pitched Pittsburgh to a 1-0 win on Wednesday.
Skenes is highly encouraged about the Pirates sitting three games above .500 nearly a quarter of the way into the season.
“We’re playing good baseball right now,” Skenes said after tossing eight innings of two-hit shutout ball on Wednesday. “Being able to win was great, and it gives us a chance to win the series (Thursday).”
The 1-0 victory was the second in three games for Pittsburgh, with the first of those coming against the Cincinnati Reds. Prior to that, the Pirates scored 26 runs in a two-game span.
Brandon Lowe supplied the lone run on Wednesday when he hammered the fourth pitch of the game from Arizona’s Michael Soroka over the 25-foot wall in center field. The blast, Lowe’s ninth of the season, measured 435 feet.
“He’s been great,” Skenes said of Lowe. “Doing that in the first inning, it makes it easier to pitch. … He’s been great all season.”
Lowe and teammate Bryan Reynolds each had two hits on Wednesday. Reynolds’ second hit, a single in the third inning, was the 1,000th of his career.
Arizona has lost five of its past six games and was blanked for the second time in the past four contests.
After racking up four doubles and a triple in their easy victory on Tuesday, the Diamondbacks had just two hits against Skenes and reliever Gregory Soto. Both were two-out singles in the fifth.
Arizona didn’t have any other baserunners until Soto issued a one-out walk in the ninth.
Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said there wasn’t much his club could do with Skenes pitching so brilliantly.
“Throw the approach out the window,” Lovullo said. “It’s very tough to hit against somebody who pitched like he did.”
Arizona second baseman Ketel Marte was hitless in four at-bats and is 2-for-22 over his past six games. Both those hits came in the Tuesday contest.
Marte is a three-time All-Star who finished third in National League MVP voting in 2024 and fourth in 2019. This season, he is batting just .215 with five homers and 13 RBIs in 34 games.
Lovullo believes Marte is experiencing a fair amount of bad luck.
“It’s probably one of the hardest parts of the game where you do everything right, you produce a line drive (and) you don’t direct it in the right spot,” Lovullo said of Marte.
Right-hander Zac Gallen (1-2, 4.45 ERA) will take the mound for the Diamondbacks on Thursday. He is winless in his past five starts.
Gallen was roughed up for six runs and seven hits in 3 2/3 innings on Friday during a 6-5 loss to the Chicago Cubs.
Gallen, 30, is 3-4 with a 4.43 ERA in seven career starts against the Pirates. Ryan O’Hearn is 6-for-12 with a homer off Gallen, while Reynolds is just 2-for-15.
The Pirates will turn to right-hander Mitch Keller (3-1, 2.85), who has a stellar 1.05 WHIP in 41 innings over seven starts.
Keller, 30, is coming off a strong performance in a 9-1 win over the Reds on Friday. He gave up one run and three hits in seven innings.
Keller is 1-0 with a 2.15 ERA over five career starts against Arizona. Marte (4-for-11) and Nolan Arenado (4-for-27) each have homered off Keller, while Geraldo Perdomo (1-for-11) and Corbin Carroll (1-for-9, five strikeouts) have struggled against him.
–Field Level Media
