Paul Skenes’ Slide Continues as Marlins Shut Out Pirates Ace: Is He Broken?

Paul Skenes could not find the answers he was looking for on Tuesday night. The Pirates ace, last year’s NL Cy Young winner and the sport’s most talked-about arm all season, took the loss as the Miami Marlins blanked Pittsburgh 2-0, with Eury Pérez firing seven scoreless innings to outduel him. Skenes fell to 9-11 and watched his ERA stay stuck near 4.00, extending a slide that has turned one of baseball’s brightest young stars into its most debated case study.

Skenes, 24, entered this season as a three-time All-Star coming off back-to-back sub-2.00 ERA campaigns — a feat no qualified pitcher age 23 or younger had managed in consecutive years since Dwight Gooden in 1984-85. That version of Skenes carried a 1.62 ERA in April and looked every bit like a repeat Cy Young threat. But since early June, something has shifted. Over his last 11 starts prior to Tuesday, Skenes was 3-5 with an ERA north of 5.00, and the Pirates had gone just 3-8 in those outings. Tuesday’s loss only deepened the trend against a Marlins team he had dominated in the past, entering the night 1-1 with a 2.60 ERA in three career starts versus Miami.

What Happened Against the Marlins

Pérez struck out the side to open the game and finished with seven strikeouts across seven innings, allowing only three hits and two walks while needing 100 pitches. Esteury Ruiz supplied the offense with a home run, and Miami made it stand up behind a defense that didn’t let a single Pirates runner advance past first base. Skenes, by contrast, was pulled after five innings and just 65 pitches, having allowed five hits, a walk and two runs — only one earned — while striking out four. It was an efficient enough line by pitch count, but it did nothing to quiet the questions surrounding him.

Those questions have consumed the baseball world for weeks. Multiple theories have emerged to explain the drop-off. One centers on a mechanical tweak: since June 9, Skenes has thrown with a noticeably more direct stride, cutting down on the crossfire delivery that defined his first two seasons and altering his release point. The result has been roughly eight to nine inches less horizontal offset on his release, which has changed the shape of every pitch in his arsenal — less rise and arm-side run on his fastball, less sweep on his slider, and shorter break on his changeup. His arm angle has also crept up by about three degrees compared to a year ago, a subtle shift that analysts say explains much of the decline in swing-and-miss quality even though his raw velocity readings haven’t collapsed.

Weight Gain, Fatigue, and the ‘Is He Broken’ Debate

A second theory has gained traction inside the Pirates’ own clubhouse. Longtime Pittsburgh insider John Perrotto reported that multiple people around the team believe Skenes is carrying extra weight and looks less athletic than in years past, which some hitters and evaluators think has slowed his delivery and sapped fastball velocity. Perrotto also noted that some opponents suspect a degree of “dead arm,” potentially tied to Skenes needing to accelerate his offseason ramp-up for high-leverage World Baseball Classic appearances. Skenes himself has pushed back on the injury narrative, insisting he feels healthy, but the visual and statistical evidence has kept the speculation alive.

Not everyone believes Skenes is actually broken, however. His underlying numbers tell a more complicated story than the ERA suggests. His FIP sits at 2.92 for the season, nearly a full run better than his 3.96 ERA, and his expected ERA hovers around 2.94 to 3.00 — both signs that defense and sequencing have magnified his struggles more than pure stuff decline. His strikeout rate is actually up from a year ago, and his 162-to-36 strikeout-to-walk ratio across 129.2 innings remains elite by league standards. The gap between his ERA and his advanced metrics suggests real regression to the mean could still be coming, even if Tuesday’s loss did nothing to prove it in the moment.

For a Pirates team scuffling to stay above .500, the stakes of solving Skenes go beyond one pitcher’s stat line — his availability and effectiveness down the stretch could shape how bettors and oddsmakers price Pittsburgh’s every remaining series, so anyone tracking the latest MLB odds would be wise to watch how he responds his next time out. Whether the fix is mechanical, physical, or simply a matter of variance evening out, Skenes and the Pirates now have a five-week stretch to prove the version of him that authored two of the greatest age-23-and-under seasons in modern history hasn’t disappeared for good.