Pirates' Skenes gives up career-worst 5 runs in loss to Cards - ESPN

Paul Skenes might still be relatively new in the major leagues, but the Pittsburgh Pirates star isn't new to baseball and he won't be sweating a shaky start Tuesday night in which he gave up a career-worst five runs to the St. Louis Cardinals.

The 22-year-old has been pitching for a while. He knows that some days — hopefully most of them — he's going to have dominant stuff that bends pitches to his will and leaves bats flailing in pursuit.

Tuesday night against the Cardinals was not one of those outings. The Cardinals got to Skenes for three runs in the third and two more in the sixth in a 5-3 St. Louis victory that dropped his record to 0-3 against Pittsburgh's longtime NL Central rival.

Skenes didn't blame the worst start of his young career on chilly temperatures or his developing relationship with catcher Endy Rodriguez. He simply missed spots a couple of times and the Cardinals made him pay.

«It's not like they hit the ball into the river or anything like that,» said Skenes after giving up five runs, the most he's surrendered in his 26 big league starts. «They just found some holes and I got behind in some counts and kind of let them get good swings off. Not going to sweat it. It is what it is.»

Skenes zipped through the first two innings, retiring six batters without going to so much as a two-ball count. His quickly faltered in the third.

Pedro Pages singled on the first pitch he saw, Masyn Winn followed one batter later with a sharp single to left and Victor Scott II hit the first triple of his big league career on a shot to deep right-center field that scored two. Scott then trotted home on Brendan Donovan's run-scoring base hit.

While Skenes said his stuff felt «good,» his mistakes often wound up closer to the