It was a heavyweight pitching matchup Friday night at Dodger Stadium as Paul Skenes faced off against Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Skenes pitched his best game of 2025, after striking out 9 batters and allowing just 5 hits, he pitched 6.1 innings and left the game after 108 pitches thrown. It's most strikeouts in an outting in 2025.
Skenes held Shoehei Othani, Mookie Betts and Tommy Edman hitless. Freddie Freeman led off the bottom of the 4th with a double down the right field line that got past Bryan Reynolds, allowing him to reach third on an error. Skenes was able to get three outs in a row and kept Freeman stranded on third.
Skenes biggest punchout of the night was when Michael Conforto was on second base with two outs in the bottom of the 4th inning and Ohtani was ahead on the count 3-1. Skenes got him to foul off a splitter and then got him to go fishing on a 3-2 curveball in the dirt, to escape the jam.
"I think you saw why Paul Skenes is who Paul Skenes is," said manager Derek Shelton. "To go through where he went at in their order and come out with a zero is extremely impressive."
On the other side, Yamamoto came into the game with an era at 0.93, but the Pirates were able to get to him early.
Oneil Cruz led off the game with a walk, he stole second and scored on an RBI single from Enmanuel Valdez to make it 1-0 Pirates. In the top of the 5th Cruz did it again with the bat, he singled home Henry Davis, who had reached on a throwing error by Max Muncy. Cruz scored on a Ke'Bryan Hayes RBI single.
"You don't see guys that run out with a sub 1 era, the ability to mix and match it seems like he has about 15 pitches. We had some good at bats off him, we made him work and then after the third you saw him settle down a little bit. I was really pleased with out approach because he's elite," said Shelton.
David Bednar came in for his first save opportunitiy since being optioned to AAA Indianapolis and had an efficient 9th inning. He got Teoscar Hernandez to fly out. After he walked Tommy Edman he struck out Will Smith with a 97 mile an hour fastball up and in, and struck out Michael Confroto with a 98 mile an hour heater to end the game.
"He's looked good. The execution of all three pitches. Earlier in the year we needed to see all three pitches. We're seeing that now," said Shelton.
The Pirates face the Dodgers Saturday for game 2 of this weekend series. Coverage on the Fan begins at 8:15 with the North Shore Tavern Leadoff Show.