Pirates ace Paul Skenes loses no-hit bid in the seventh but secures the win
On a warm Tuesday night at PNC Park, Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning against the Colorado Rockies. The 22-year-old right-hander's bid ended when Rockies pinch-hitter Mickey Moniak lined a clean single to left.
Skenes had pumped four straight splitters at the previous batter before Moniak read a hanging slider on the outside corner and drove it into shallow left-center at 96 mph off the bat. The hit was the first Pirates surrendered all evening.
Witnesses said the home crowd went silent for a beat before rising to give Skenes a standing ovation. "By the sound from up there I knew it was OK," the pitcher said afterward. "What was I going to do?"
Skenes has been at the front of the National League MVP conversation through the first seven weeks of the season. He carries a 1.98 ERA into mid-May and 86 strikeouts. Among starters, he is positioning himself to become one of the youngest Cy Young winners on record if his pace holds.
In the seventh and eighth the Pirates went to the bullpen. Skenes finished with 95 pitches — 64 of them strikes — five strikeouts and no walks. Across three big-league seasons, this remains his closest approach to a no-hitter.
For Pittsburgh the win was important in the NL Central. They had taken seven of nine games against the divisional pacesetters Atlanta and Philadelphia, and Skenes's performance papered over a three-week stretch in which the rotation behind him had struggled.
For the Rockies, manager Bud Black said: "That was Skenes's night more than anything else. The Statcast numbers say his 96th pitch was still 1.4 mph hotter than the league average heater." The Rockies's clubhouse president called Moniak in afterwards and presented him with a celebratory crate of oranges, in keeping with a small clubhouse tradition.
Waiting for Skenes outside the dugout was his partner, the gymnast Olivia Dunne, who smiled and said "close." Skenes was less interested in how close it had been than in what the win meant for a club that has overperformed its preseason projections. "A no-hitter would have been nice, but we're playing 60-win baseball," he said.
Pittsburgh moved to 22-19 with the win, fourth in the Central. Skenes's next scheduled outing is Sunday at the Chicago Cubs. The Pirates have ten games in the next three weeks against the top of the National League standings.
MLB history records 322 no-hitters. The most recent was in late 2024 by Trevor Williams, and the average gap between no-hitters in modern baseball is about five to six months. The current drought has stretched into its eighteenth month. Skenes came close to ending it.