pirates score is not a chant in a ballpark yet, but it hangs over Pittsburgh’s opening-day mood like a test the team keeps retaking: can elite pitching finally pull a long-waiting roster into a new era? On March 26, 2026 (ET), the Pirates open their season against the New York Mets, and the storyline has a single name at its center—Paul Skenes.
What makes Pirates Score feel like more than a box score?
It’s the contrast between what Skenes has already done and what the Pirates still need. Only two seasons into his Major League career, Skenes has already stacked historic milestones: Rookie of the Year honors in 2024, then a Cy Young award in 2025. In both seasons, he posted a sub-2. 00 ERA—1. 96 in 2024 and 1. 97 last season—numbers that read like they belong to a different sport.
Last year, he didn’t just win the award; he was the unanimous National League Cy Young winner, taking all 30 first-place votes, becoming only the 13th NL player to do so. He also started the 2025 All-Star Game, led MLB in ERA (1. 97), and held opponents to a. 199 batting average and. 558 OPS.
And yet, the same season included a reminder that pitching dominance does not automatically translate into wins. Skenes finished 10-10, a record tied to what the Pirates’ lineup gave him: 3. 4 runs per game of support, the third-lowest for any qualified pitcher. When the best arm in a rotation is living on slim margins, the “score” becomes a kind of emotional ledger—how many nights can one pitcher keep the game inside the lines?
Pirates Score: Can Skenes really do it again in 2026?
That question is now the hinge of the Pirates’ early season. MLB analyst David Schoenfield, an writer, offered a clear-eyed prediction that still carries a warning label. “Again, all it takes is a couple of blow-up starts, and a sub-2. 00 ERA in this era becomes difficult, ” Schoenfield wrote. “However, Skenes had 12 starts last season where he allowed no runs. That total should rise in 2026 — and I doubt there will be many, if any, five-run outings for this ace. ”
Schoenfield’s point is less about certainty than about fragility: the difference between a 1. 97 ERA and something meaningfully higher can be two bad nights, a few pitches that don’t bite, a couple of balls that find grass. For a pitcher chasing a third straight season under 2. 00, the quest is both mathematical and psychological—how to keep repeating the nearly unrepeatable.
There are already signs of momentum. Skenes started 2026 strongly on an international stage, earning two wins in two starts with a 1. 08 ERA for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic. Those performances don’t guarantee anything in the National League, but they do extend the same narrative thread: when the stage rises, his baseline stays high.
How dominant was Skenes in 2025—and what did it cost the Pirates?
If Skenes’ 10-10 record looked ordinary, the workload and the underlying results did not. He struck out 216 batters—second in the National League—over 187. 7 innings. He led the NL in WHIP (0. 95) and home runs allowed per nine innings (0. 5). He also became the first pitcher to post a sub-2. 00 ERA with at least 185 innings since Jacob deGrom did it in 2018.
There’s another historical framing: only two pitchers since 1920—Clayton Kershaw and Sandy Koufax—have posted three seasons with at least 100 innings and a sub-2. 00 ERA, and neither did it in three consecutive seasons. Skenes is now positioned to try to push into that rare air.
But the Pirates’ side of the equation is not just whether Skenes can dominate again; it’s whether the rest of the roster can take advantage of his dominance. The Pirates were active this offseason with hopes of ending their playoff drought. Still, last year’s run support number—3. 4 per game for Skenes—acts as a blunt indicator of how narrow the team’s path can become when the offense doesn’t meet its pitcher halfway.
Who is putting expectations on Skenes, and what do those expectations mean?
The expectations are coming from multiple directions, and they are no longer subtle. Brent Maguire of MLB predicted a 10+ bWAR season for Skenes. That is a threshold that evokes past peaks: the last pitcher mentioned in this context is Zack Greinke in his 2009 Cy Young season. For Skenes, it would be a jump from 7. 7 bWAR last season, compiled across 32 starts and 187. 2 innings.
At the same time, projections and hype can feel abstract against the daily grind of games. The lived reality for the Pirates is simpler: if they are going to make the playoffs, Skenes will need to be dominant as the team’s ace—an expectation Schoenfield explicitly shares.
There is also the question of awards. Skenes has a chance to win back-to-back National League Cy Young awards, something last accomplished in 2018 and 2019 by Jacob deGrom. These comparisons are flattering, but they carry an unspoken burden: awards don’t erase the nights when a 1-0 game becomes a loss because there is no second run.
pirates score becomes, in that context, less about a team’s ability to tally runs once and more about its ability to do it consistently—enough to make “ace nights” feel like guarantees instead of coin flips.
What happens next on March 26 (ET), and what would “turning a corner” look like?
The schedule gives the first answer quickly. Pittsburgh opens its 2026 MLB season on March 26 (ET) against the New York Mets. Opening Day does not define a year, but it does define a tone. For a team trying to end a playoff drought, it’s a stage where small things matter: how the lineup responds to early pressure, whether the defense holds routine plays, whether a close game is managed with urgency rather than hope.
Skenes’ part of the story is the clearest: keep the run prevention elite, keep the blow-up starts rare, keep the league’s best hitters uncomfortable. The rest of the story belongs to the players who have to make his outings count on the scoreboard. If the Pirates have truly built momentum with offseason activity, the early weeks are where it becomes visible: not in declarations, but in the ordinary accumulation of runs and wins.
Back at the start of this season, the phrase pirates score is still more question than statement. It will be answered inning by inning—by a pitcher chasing history, and by a team trying to make his excellence feel like the beginning of something, not another lonely masterpiece.
