{"id":665410,"date":"2026-04-05T23:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T23:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/665410\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T23:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T23:14:13","slug":"pirates-make-improbable-pittsburgh-baseball-history-not-done-since-1943","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/665410\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates make improbable Pittsburgh baseball history not done since 1943"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/pittsburgh-pirates\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pittsburgh Pirates<\/a> believed heading into this season that they&#8217;d have a quality starting pitching rotation.<\/p>\n<p>So far, so good.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, historic.<\/p>\n<p>The Pirates&#8217; starting pitchers haven&#8217;t allowed a home run in the first nine games of the campaign. In this modern, homer-happy baseball world, that&#8217;s almost impossible.<\/p>\n<p>The last time a streak lasted this long to begin a season was the 2018 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/san-francisco-giants\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">San Francisco Giants<\/a>, according to MLB Network&#8217;s Sarah Langs.<\/p>\n<p>For the Pirates, it&#8217;s been much longer.<\/p>\n<p>They haven&#8217;t had a streak of homers not giving up homers to start the season since 1943 &#8212; when they went the first 17 games without allowing a four-bagger.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The Pirates&#8217; starting rotation is the only one in MLB without a homer allowed<\/p>\n<p>Longest streak by PIT SP to start a season since 1943 (17g)<\/p>\n<p>PIT\u2019s current 9-game streak is longest to start a season in MLB since 2018 Giants (10g)<\/p>\n<p>h\/t <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MLBNetwork?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">@MLBNetwork<\/a> research squad<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SlangsOnSports\/status\/2040880624261550348?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">April 5, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/los-angeles-angels\/news\/angels-jo-adell-robbed-3-home-runs-mariners-same-game-who-hit-how-did-it\/cedbd653305cdab130512218\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Jo Adell robbed 3 home runs in the same game<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Paul Skenes, Mitch Keller, Braxton Ashcraft and Carmen Mlodzinski have each made two starts this season. Bubba Chandler has made one.<\/p>\n<p>Chandler has a 0.00 ERA. Keller&#8217;s is 1.50, Ashcraft at 2.25, Mlodzinski at 4.00 and Skenes at 9.53 after that nightmare (but not hard-hit) first start.<\/p>\n<p>Giving up homers is believed to be more of a skill for pitchers than simply giving up hits, which has a lot more luck involved.<\/p>\n<p>So far, the Pirates have that skill working nicely. If they keep it up, this could be a great season in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n<p>More MLB news:<\/p>\n<p>                            <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Pirates believed heading into this season that they&#8217;d have a quality starting pitching rotation. So far,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,4,10,776,64,4297],"class_list":{"0":"post-665410","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-pirates","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-pirates","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","13":"tag-pittsburghpirates"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116354643705963621","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}