Paul Skenes sharp in another short outing, but Pirates fall to Twins, dropping 7th straight

The past three starts by Paul Skenes have been five innings or fewer, with two of those three featuring only 78 pitches thrown.

Skenes’ abbreviated starts of late largely have been because of publicly acknowledged workload management, with the Pirates and their sophomore pitching phenom on the same page.

The Pirates sent Skenes, set to be the club’s only representative in Tuesday’s All-Star Game, to the hill Friday night in Minnesota to begin a three-game series at Target Field with the Twins.

It remained to be seen how deep Skenes might go in the contest while being a strong candidate to start for the NL for the second straight year.

As it turned out, Skenes had another short start, tossing five innings and throwing 78 pitches again in a 2-1 Pirates loss.

Skenes (4-8, 2.01 ERA) threw 53 of his pitches for strikes, allowing five hits and striking out six with zero walks, taking the defeat.

In Skenes’ eyes, accuracy with the heater has made a difference over his last several starts.

“Just watching my progression through the season, as I look at March and April and into May, the fastball command wasn’t outstanding,” Skenes said on the SportsNet Pittsburgh postgame show. “But the last few starts, I’ve been really happy with it, just being able to pick lanes and put the ball where I want it to go. It makes pitching a lot easier when you have fastball command.”

But despite improved command, a 2.05 ERA in June and a 0.00 ERA to begin July, not since May 28 have the Pirates (38-57) earned Skenes a victory.

Friday’s loss was the Pirates’ seventh straight, and they now are now 0-7 on their nine-game road trip, which runs through Sunday.

With Skenes pitching a perfect game through three innings, the Pirates got on the board in the top of the fourth, when Isiah Kiner-Falefa doubled home Spencer Horwitz, who singled and scored from first.

Unfortunately for Skenes, his mastery ended in the bottom of the fourth when Byron Buxton led off with a single.

Two batters later, Trevor Larnach took Skenes deep to put the Twins up 2-1. It was Skenes’ first homer allowed since June 3.

Before the inning was over, Skenes made Matt Wallner his 300th career strikeout victim. Per Elias Sports Bureau, Skenes is the first Pirates pitcher and one of only 17 in MLB history to reach the milestone in their first 43 big-league games.

Twins starter Joe Ryan required 34 pitches to escape the first inning, which he did without any damage despite the Pirates working multiple deep counts at the plate and loading the bases.

Ryan (9-4), like Skenes, lasted five innings but picked up the victory.

Skenes had an electric start to the game, striking out the side in the bottom of the first with only 12 pitches.

Over the following two frames, he maintained that same efficiency, retiring Minnesota in order through the third inning.

Skenes departed after the fifth inning — on the hook for a loss — and was succeeded on the hill by Carmen Mlodzinski, who delivered three scoreless frames.

With two outs in the fifth, manager Don Kelly headed to the mound with two men on and Willi Castro set to hit.

Skenes, after seemingly convincing Kelly to leave him in the game for one last batter, made good on the request by striking out Castro for the final out.

“We had a plan going into the game, just going out to check and make sure he was good,” Kelly said. “He wanted to get out of that inning, he was able to do that, and I thought early on his stuff was electric.”

In the seventh, Tommy Pham attempted to stretch a ball high off the right-field wall into a double but was thrown out at second base by DaShawn Keirsey.

As Pham slid, he collided with shortstop Carlos Correa, who applied the tag and went down in pain before exiting the game with an apparent ankle injury.

Needing a run to tie the score, the Pirates went down in order in the eighth against Twins reliever Griffin Jax.

In the ninth, Jhoan Duran took over for Minnesota, and despite allowing a single to Horwitz, with the Pirates advancing a man into scoring position when pinch-runner Jack Suwinski stole second base, he picked up his 15th save.

“A losing streak’s terrible,” Kelly said. “When you go through it, the players feel it, everybody feels it, the fans feel it — it stinks. “I think the thing I’m proud of these guys is they continue to battle even in the ninth inning against a really tough closer. … We’re finishing games, we’re right there, one-run (loss) — we just need to find a way to get over the hump.”