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Pittsburgh Pirates’ Paul Skenes pitches in the first inning of Sunday\u2019s baseball game against the Cleveland Guardians in Cleveland. Associated Press<\/p>\n
CLEVELAND \u2014 Paul Skenes allowed one run and struck out eight in seven innings and the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the Cleveland Guardians 7-1 Sunday.<\/p>\n
Skenes (9-8) went at least seven innings for the first time since May 12. The All-Star right-hander gave up seven hits.<\/p>\n
After allowing eight runs (seven earned) in four innings in a 10-6 loss at Philadelphia on July 1, Skenes is 3-0 with a 2.46 ERA.<\/p>\n
Billy Cook had a career-high three hits and drove in two runs, Esmerlyn Valdez continued his torrid July with a two-run homer in the ninth and Nick Gonzales had two doubles as the Pirates won their fifth straight interleague series. They have gone 11-4 in that span.<\/p>\n
Steven Kwan had two hits for Cleveland, which had won its past three series against Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
Cook gave Pittsburgh a 1-0 lead in the second with a base hit to right off Cleveland starter Joey Cantillo (8-5) to drive in Gonzales.<\/p>\n
The Pittsburgh center fielder led off the fifth with a triple off the wall in the right-field corner before scoring when Cleveland catcher Austin Hedges had a throwing error on a pickoff attempt at third.<\/p>\n
Cook extended the Pirates\u2019 lead to 4-1 in the sixth with an RBI single up the middle to score Jacob Gonzalez.<\/p>\n
Valdez’s drive down the left-field line off Will Dion in the ninth made him the sixth Pirates rookie with at least 20 RBIs in a calendar month.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
The Pirates head to New York for a three-game series against the Yankees. All-Star RHP Braxton Ashcraft (9-3, 3.49 ERA) gets the start Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Pirates’ Paul Skenes pitches in the first inning of Sunday\u2019s baseball game against the Cleveland Guardians in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,9331,9323,9318,9338,9344,9347,9322,9326,9324,1242,9325,9330,9321,9343,9337,9320,9341,9329,9319,9332,1358,9345,4,9335,169,6423,3838,9336,10,776,64,4297,7502,9327,9340,9339,9328,9346,9334,9333,9342],"class_list":["post-756223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-baseball","tag-bruin","tag-butler","tag-butler-eagle","tag-cabot","tag-callery","tag-cherry-valley","tag-community-news","tag-connoquenessing","tag-cranberry","tag-crime","tag-east-butler","tag-eau-claire","tag-education-news","tag-evans-city","tag-fairview","tag-government-news","tag-harmony","tag-harrisville","tag-high-school-sports-news","tag-karns-city","tag-local-news","tag-mars","tag-mlb","tag-mount-chesnut","tag-news","tag-obituaries","tag-pennsylvania","tag-petrolia","tag-pirates","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-pittsburghpirates","tag-political-news","tag-portersville","tag-sarver","tag-saxonburg","tag-slippery-rock","tag-valencia","tag-west-liberty","tag-west-sunbury","tag-zelienople"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756223","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=756223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}