Tim Benz: Sparkling Sunday from Paul Skenes, Oneil Cruz shines light on Ben Cherington

There was some irony to the Pittsburgh Pirates hosting Peanuts Night on Saturday. After all, most of the episodes of Peanuts that involved baseball featured Charlie Brown getting knocked off the mound by line drives, Snoopy being traded for five random prospects, and it rained a lot.

Not to mention, most Pirates fans usually leave PNC Park sucking their thumbs and holding their blankets like Linus as they seek psychological counseling from Lucy Van Pelt for five cents. 

Then again, Charlie Brown never played with Paul Skenes and Oneil Cruz.

On Sunday, Pirates fans got to watch a game when those two stars sparkled on the same day at PNC Park, en route to a 6-0 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Skenes got a win to improve his undeservedly shoddy record to 6-8, while lowering his stellar ERA below 1.90 (1.83). The Cy Young candidate tossed six innings of shutout baseball that featured nine strikeouts, just one walk and three hits allowed over 99 pitches.

Last season’s National League Rookie of The Year was particularly masterful with runners on base. He stranded a Diamondback on first base in the first inning, another on third after a one-out triple in the second, and yet another on second after a third-inning leadoff double. Skenes also prevented Jake McCarthy from scoring after a one-out double in the fifth.

The Pirates’ right-hander leads Major League Baseball with a .166 batting average against and a 0.77 WHIP with runners on base. He’s also sixth in the Majors in batting average against (.181) and best in WHIP (0.79) when it comes to pitching against hitters with runners in scoring position.

As mentioned on the Pirates radio broadcast Sunday, Skenes entered the game stranding 81% of runners in scoring position with only one out. In each of the three times he faced that situation Sunday, he got a strikeout of the next hitter.

“You get a runner on second, a runner on third with less than two (outs), they’re probably going to swing early more often,” Skenes said. “So we were just going to chase pitches a little earlier in the count and they either swing, or it’s a ball. So that kind of drove the pitch count up. But, yeah, ended up executing.”

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With a quickly accumulating pitch count through four innings, Skenes had 1-2-3 efforts in the fifth and sixth to make sure he stayed in the game and covered as many innings as he could.

Even though manager Don Kelly almost pulled him after 5⅔ innings.

“It’s a hot day (83 degrees). He’s approaching 100 pitches, ramping back up a little bit. We’ve kept his pitch count down. Just wanted to make sure that he was in a good spot there to finish it off,” Kelly said.

“He was good to go.”

Meanwhile, even though Cruz didn’t hit one of his trademark tape-measure home runs, he still impacted the game significantly and had a few eye-popping Statcast moments.

The centerfielder registered two hits, a walk, had two RBIs, didn’t strike out and dazzled people with his speed while scoring from first on a single by Tommy Pham.

1ST TO HOME ON A SINGLE WITH NO THROW ????

ONEIL CRUZ IS A CHEAT CODE ???? ???? pic.twitter.com/x0Fe7Tnqxy

— SportsNet Pittsburgh (@SNPittsburgh) July 27, 2025

Again, according to the Pirates 93.7 The Fan Radio broadcast, it only took Cruz nine seconds to do that. That was the fastest effort to score from first on a hit in MLB all year.

“Unbelievable,” Kelly said. “Stealing on that pitch, busting it around second. … There aren’t many guys in the league that can score on that ball down the line 320 feet.”

Watching those two perform the way they did Sunday, it was a reminder of what the Pirates could be if Skenes had the support around him he needs, and if Cruz could ever bottle the raw talent he has and play that way consistently.

All of that happened Sunday as the Pirates played their final home game before the MLB trade deadline on Thursday. Some have theorized that while the Pirates may sell off their expiring-contract assets, they may use existing talent in their prospect pool to acquire much-needed offense that is under contract for at least the rest of this year and next.

“In Pittsburgh, in a lot of cases, we’re going to be acquiring players who are not fully proven yet, who we believe can contribute, whether it’s on the pitching side or position-player side in the near-term,” Cherington said Sunday via TribLIVE’s Kevin Gorman. “Part of this, of getting better, is really doing that really well — acquiring those less proven players and bringing them into an environment where they can thrive and are getting better.”

Unfortunately, going back to the Peanuts theme, most of the time when Cherington makes trades, he comes off like Charlie Brown in the “Great Pumpkin” Halloween special.

All he gets is a rock.

Hopefully, this year, Cherington comes up with a few more treats than tricks. As Pirates fans, we’ve been tricked way too often over the past decade since this franchise last made the playoffs.

Listen: Tim Benz and Kevin Gorman discuss the Pirates, Dave Parker and the trade deadline in this week’s baseball podcast