With the Pirates trailing by two and their season teetering on Wednesday afternoon, Rafael Flores Jr. calmly grabbed a bat and jogged upstairs to the batting cages adjacent to the service tunnel in the bowels of PNC Park.

Pirates ace Paul Skenes said he knows there remains plenty to work on after Wednesday's rocky outing bumped his ERA to 3.95, more than double his career mark of 1.96 when the season began.

Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes will face the Detroit Tigers on Wednesday, with Jackson Jobe countering. Here's our Tigers vs Pirates prediction.

Praise the baseball gods, we have afternoon baseball to watch and bet on! There are a handful of matinee matchups today, and the first one is a showdown between

Expert recap and game analysis of the Pittsburgh Pirates vs. Detroit Tigers MLB game from August 18, 2026 on ESPN.

The 65 pitches thrown represent the third fewest Skenes has delivered in an outing this season, after an Opening Day meltdown against the New York Mets in which he lasted two-thirds of an inning (37 pitches) and an April home start against the Tampa Bay Rays (64 pitches).

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Paul Skenes insists he has had stretches during his still-burgeoning career when he has had to grit his teeth and grind through it. The problem is, it rarely seemed like it. Spending two seasons doing things few pitchers in the history of the game have done — as Skenes did while winning NL Rookie of the Year in 2024 and the NL Cy Young in 2025 with a dazzling arsenal that was frequently unhittable — has a way of

Two solo home runs in the bottom of the ninth inning capped of an improbable 4-3 walk-off win for the Pirates over the Tigers in a Wednesday afternoon rubber match at PNC Park.