Marte's Pinch-Hit Blast Ends Reds' Division Futility Against Skenes

The Reds walked into PNC Park carrying two unwelcome narratives: they hadn't beaten a division opponent since early June, and they'd never won a game in which Paul Skenes took the mound. Friday night, they erased both. Noelvi Marte, pinch-hitting for Nathaniel Lowe in the eighth inning, drove a full-count fastball from Pirates reliever Mason Montgomery into the seats for a two-run homer that broke a 4-4 tie and sent Cincinnati to a 6-4 win. It was Marte's first pinch-hit home run of his career—a moment that crystallized the Reds' ability to capitalize once they got their opening.

The opening came early. Andrew Abbott's counterpart, Skenes, is a 5-0 pitcher against Cincinnati with a 0.53 career ERA entering this matchup, yet the Reds battered him in the second inning. Nathaniel Lowe led off with a double, then Cincinnati strung together four consecutive hits—Spencer Steer's RBI single, Tyler Stephenson's run-scoring single, and two sacrifice flies from Blake Dunn and Elly De La Cruz—to manufacture a 4-1 lead before Skenes could find his footing. He burned 38 pitches navigating that inning alone, a bruising start that telegraphed fatigue. When Pirates relievers took over, the Reds' offense stalled; Skenes himself settled in after his exit, but by then Cincinnati had muscled out the runs it would need.

Pittsburgh clawed back through the middle innings. Konnor Griffin's leadoff homer in the first tied things early. A throwing error from Suárez on a Davis grounder in the fifth produced an unearned run. Then Marcell Ozuna and Esmerlyn Valdez went deep off Abbott fastballs in the sixth, knotting the game at 4-4 and forcing the Reds to find a late-inning solution. Abbott's fastball location deteriorated as the game stretched—a familiar pattern when a starter has already worked his way into the sixth with minimal margin for error.

From a betting standpoint, Skenes' vulnerability to Cincinnati is worth isolating. He entered 5-0 with that microscopic 0.53 ERA, yet the Pirates have now lost seven consecutive games in which he's started this season. That paradox—an elite individual performance in games the team loses—suggests Skenes' workload in early innings (like the 38-pitch second here) leaves Pittsburgh's bullpen exposed. The Reds' early aggression, batting around and forcing a high pitch count before the fourth inning, is a reproducible script. Against teams with shaky relief corps, that attack profile correlates with overs on team totals when Cincinnati gets to face a starter with injury concerns or a heavy workload profile. Marte's emergence as a bench bat with power also adds volatility to Reds games; he wasn't a lineup regular entering Friday, but his first pinch-hit bomb raises the floor on Cincinnati's late-inning upside in close games where he sees an at-bat.

The 3-16 division record, meanwhile, represents genuine underperformance that shouldn't persist. Cincinnati has the offensive tools to compete within its division; Friday's win proves they can break through elite starters when they attack early and capitalize on relief vulnerability. The Pirates' seven-game losing streak with Skenes on the mound, paired with the Reds' improved in-division execution, suggests the margin between these teams has tightened more than the season record indicates.