Last Night in Baseball: Paul Skenes bests Phillies, looks like Paul Skenes again

There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to handle themselves.

That’s why we’re here to help, though, by sifting through the previous days’ games, and figuring out what you missed, but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from the weekend in Major League Baseball:

Skenes dominates, Pirates sweep

Paul Skenes’ ERA kept dropping in May, but there were some potentially concerning signs left behind in those early starts. He was uncharacteristically struggling with his command and control, such as when he gave up three home runs to the Cubs on May 1 while walking four, or gave up another four free passes to the Cardinals in his next start, or the three walks allowed to the Mets in the one after that. You don’t really like to think about what a sudden loss of command for a flamethrowing starting pitcher means, especially one as precise with their location as Skenes has been in his young careere, but it was hard to not start to wonder if something alarming was happening. Such is the way of modern baseball and max-effort velocity.

Whatever was bothering Skenes, though, be it physical or mechanical, seems to be in the rear view, as the Phillies just got a reminder of on Sunday. In a performance that secured the sweep for the Pirates, Skenes went 7.2 innings with seven strikeouts against one walk, while allowing just one unearned run and a pair of hits. His ERA now stands at 1.88, even lower than last year’s absurd 1.96 rookie-season performance, and, over his last five starts — meaning the five since that troubling run of command and control issues — Skenes has posted a 0.74 ERA with 39 strikeouts in 36.1 innings, and against all of five walks. He’s also just allowed the one homer in that stretch.

That performance has brought him all of a 3-2 record to show for it, because this is still the Pirates we’re talking about — they’ve scored 3.6 runs per start for him over those five, and that’s with one of them being a 10-run effort — but hey, it’s at least headed in the right direction. Sort of. The Pirates are lucky they’ve got a guy who can win a 2-1 game, is all, but maybe the bats could stand to be a little less withholding when their guy is on the mound, hmm? Just because he can win in those situations doesn’t mean he should have to do so almost exclusively.

As for the Phillies… it hasn’t been a great June. The Brewers completed a weekend sweep on the first of the month, then they lost two of three to the Blue Jays — including a walk-off loss on Wednesday — and now they were swept by the lowly Pirates, a team still on pace for 98 losses despite sweeping the Phils and having literally Paul Skenes in their rotation. The Phillies are now 4.5 games back of the Mets in the NL East, even though they were in first place on May 31, and have spent 36 days in that spot this year.

Raleigh extends home run lead

Cal Raleigh didn’t play on Sunday — hey, he’s a catcher, even Big Dumper needs a day off sometimes — but on Saturday, he went yard twice. He’s now up to .272/.380/.655 on the season, with an MLB-leading 26 homers: that’s three more than Aaron Judge, who sits in second place and is ranked that highly because he also went deep twice over the weekend, with a pair of homers against the Red Sox on Sunday.

Despite Raleigh driving in four runs on his own with those dingers, the Mariners would fall to the Angels, 8-6, their fifth loss in a row. While we’re on the subject…

Kirby’s Return to Dream Land

George Kirby’s 2025 hadn’t been going that well. He didn’t even make his debut until May 22, owing to shoulder inflammation that forced him to the Injured List to begin the season, and then, in his first two starts, he looked an awful lot like a guy who was debuting late after coming off of an injury: Kirby allowed 11 runs in 8.2 innings, while allowing three homers.

In Kirby’s third start of the year, he recaptured a bit of the old magic, going five innings against the Orioles while allowing two runs. The Mariners lost, but that wasn’t on him, at least, like in the previous two outings. Sunday, though, was when everything came together again for Kirby: seven innings, two runs allowed, no walks, a pair of hits, and 14 strikeouts. It ended a skid for both Kirby and the Mariners, who as said above had lost five in a row and were in line to be swept by the Angels.

Now, Kirby isn’t usually this kind of strikeout guy, but it’s still a great sign for his return to prominence. He’s been a durable and reliable starter for a few years now, one who succeeds largely on keeping the ball in the park often enough while limiting walks to league-leading rates — Kirby gave up just 0.9 walks per nine innings in 2023, across over 190 frames, and then led the league again at just 1.1 per nine in 2024. The strikeouts are there — Kirby’s at 8.6 of those per nine in his career — but it’s keeping baserunners to a minimum and allowing solo shots that allows him to be an above-average rotation arm for the Mariners. The kind they’ll need around if they’re to keep competing for supremacy in the AL West.

Alonso makes Mets history in Mets sweep

Pete Alonso’s Sunday helped the Mets sweep the Rockies — Colorado followed up a surprise sweep of the Marlins last week by being handed three Ls in a row against New York — and also moved him up their history books. Alonso’s first homer of the day tied him for second all-time on the Mets list with David Wright, and his second gave him sole possession.

Alonso is just nine long balls away from tying Daryl Strawberry for first place on this list, as well: given that it’s June 9 and the Mets’ first baseman already has 17 dingers on the year, and he’s hit at least 34 in every full, non-pandemic-shortened season he’s played in the majors, we’re likely to see him climb to the top of the leaderboard before too much longer.

Whether Alonso puts some serious distance between himself and New York’s past is going to depend entirely on whether he ends up signing a long-term deal or not this offseason – Alonso has a $24 million player option in 2026, the second and final year of the deal he signed this winter – but you’d have to imagine the Mets are more open to his contract demands now than they were in the offseason. Assuming he can keep hitting like he has been, anyway: Alonso is up to .301/.396/.594 on the year, which would all be career-highs.

The Braves are scuffling, but Acuña is not

The Braves are still having a rough 2025, and that hasn’t changed all that much since Ronald Acuña Jr. returned from his second ACL surgery back on May 23: they’re now 27-37 on the season, 9.5 out from a wild card spot, and have now lost seven games in a row.. However, none of that is Acuña’s doing: he’s batting .304/.391/.554 with four homers and a 163 OPS+ in the 15 games since he’s come back from injury, and he even flashed a bit of leather in the outfield on Sunday against the Giants.

The diving catch itself is a highlight, but that Acuña immediately rolls back into position so he can hold the runners on second and first base where they were to keep them from advancing is a nifty bonus. There’s still a lot of talent on this team, and if Acuña can keep it rolling, maybe they’ll be able to turn things around before it’s too late.

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