The Rangers are missing Paul Skenes this week, and it's both good and bad

The first 22 games of the season have been anything but a cakewalk for the Rangers, playing 16 of the contests on the road against three playoff teams from 2025, but there has been a little bit of good fortune mixed in with the degree of difficulty.

Rangers managed to dodge the two best Dodgers pitchers in Los Angeles, avoiding Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Now, they are sidestepping what may be the best hurler in all of baseball, the dominant, reigning NL Cy Young winner in Paul Skenes.

It's a good break for the Rangers, but a bummer for fans of top-tier pitching

Are guys like Brandon Nimmo, Corey Seager and Wyatt Langford happy that Skenes won't be out there on the mound staring them down? Absolutely!

Still, fans of elite pitching might have made it a bucket list item to see the ace's incredible arsenal, which includes a blistering 100 mph heater, knee-buckling curve ball, splitter and slider. All of it would have been on display for what will be the Pirates' only swing through Arlington this season. You don't know how many more times the Rangers will play the National League team from the Steel City at Globe Life in the future.

In 2026, through five starts, the defending top pitcher in the NL already has mind-boggling stats. He is 3-1 with an ERA of 3.27 (1.40 if you toss out the Opening Day disaster against the Mets) and a minuscule 0.91 WHIP. He has struck out 23 hitters against just seven walks.

Skenes is just now roundng into form

In Skenes's last three starts, he has only allowed three earned runs over 21.1 innings. In his most recent effort against the Tampa Bay Rays, Skenes went four scoreless innings and allowed three hits., only getting pulled due to a lengthy rain delay of over two hours.

The 6-foot-6, 260-pound behemoth out of LSU is in his third year and is already the prohibitive favorite to win a second straight Cy Young, and it would have been a treat for fans of premier pitching to get a look at what is arguably the best MLB has to offer right now.

None of the Rangers lineup, one through nine, is complaining, mind you. Nonetheless, they are going to have their hands full with the upstart trio of Carmen Mlodzinski, Braxton Ashcraft and Mitch Keller.

The surprising Pirates enter the series in at 13-9 with a +25 run differential, trailing the Cincinnati Reds by just 1.5 games for the NL Central lead.

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