Thursday, 4 a.m.
Say what you will about the difficulty of playing the Pittsburgh Pirates, a team that has struggled for a decade.
The job gets significantly harder, however, when you have to play the Pirates and Paul Skenes.
Skenes has wasted little time in establishing himself as one of baseball’s elite pitchers. He reminded the Tampa Bay Rays of that in Wednesday’s 4-2 victory. Skenes threw seven innings of shutout baseball, giving up just three hits and striking out six.
The Rays managed just four hits overall, two of them by Jonny DeLuca. The other two were by Yandy Diaz and rookie Jake Mangum, who had eight hits in the series against the Pirates.
Ryan Pepiot struggled, giving up two runs and five hits in five innings.
The Rays are off today, then play in Arlington against the Texas Rangers on Friday. Zack Littell will start for the Rays against Tyler Mahle.