CLEVELAND (AP) \u2014 Paul Skenes allowed one run and struck out eight in seven innings and the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the Cleveland Guardians 7-1 on 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
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 on Monday.<\/p>\n
Guardians: RHP Tanner Bibee (3-9, 3.90 ERA) goes on Monday when Cleveland opens a four-game set against Minnesota.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND (AP) \u2014 Paul Skenes allowed one run and struck out eight in seven innings and the Pittsburgh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[6198,5,24910,135,51,2565,538,17369,1270,4,10608,9500,9501,877,93796,9496,9497,83365,36947,2081,777,47161],"class_list":["post-756402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-guardians","tag-austin-hedges","tag-baseball","tag-billy-cook","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-clevelandguardians","tag-guardians","tag-jacob-gonzalez","tag-joey-cantillo","tag-mlb","tag-nick-gonzales","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-paul-skenes","tag-pirates-guardians-score","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40806-ap-ohio-sports-only","tag-product-40809-ap-pennsylvania-sports-only","tag-steven-kwan","tag-tanner-bibee","tag-will-dion"],"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\/756402","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=756402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}