A great individual player can swing a team’s fortunes in many sports, but baseball might be the ultimate team game. There may be no better examples of that than 2024 and 2025 Paul Skenes, when he was historically dominant but the Pittsburgh Pirates finished at the bottom of the NL Central.

Now, though, the Pirates have a winning record, and though they’re still fourth in a division in which every team is over .500, signs of real progress have been made. This weekend, Pittsburgh will face arguably its stiffest test yet, when it travels for a three-game series against the Milwaukee Brewers, who — despite sitting last in the division — won it last season and advanced to the National League Championship Series.

Skenes will make his sixth start of the season at 7:40 p.m. ET, while Milwaukee will counter with Brandon Woodruff.

Let’s break down this matchup with some odds and lines at DraftKings Sportsbook.

Pittsburgh Pirates at Milwaukee Brewers prediction, preview

Given each team’s expectations to start the season, it’s hard not to be impressed by the Pirates’ performance so far. They opened the season strong with six wins in their first nine games, including two over a playoff team in the Cincinnati Reds, and they’ve basically alternated wins and losses since. After finishing last season dead last in OPS, Pittsburgh ranks 11th so far, which has mostly been a result of the Brandon Lowe signing, not the promotion of top prospect Konnor Griffin, who should eventually start hitting well. A slightly above-average offense should be sufficient to make the playoffs, given the pitching talent on the Pirates’ roster.

Meanwhile, the Brewers have had a roller-coaster start to the season, winning eight of their first 10 games, losing each of the next six, and bouncing back with five wins in eight. They haven’t hit quite as well, dropping 29 OPS points relative to 2025, and they’ve allowed 0.4 more earned runs per nine innings, but their Pythagorean W-L suggests that they should be one game better. Milwaukee is still a good candidate to make a deep run, especially once that luck normalizes and once relievers Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill return to form.

Skenes has had a pedestrian start to the season on paper, but only because he had a disastrous first game in which he gave up five runs while getting just two outs, thanks in part to some disastrous defense. Since then, though, he’s been Paul Skenes, pitching 21.1 innings and giving up just three earned runs. His statistical output is still elite: while he’s slightly struggled to induce whiffs, he still ranks in the top decile in expected ERA, expected batting average, and hard-hit percentage. Other than his rarely-used curveball, his spin rates are higher across the board, and his velocity has experienced only a slight dip. Given Pittsburgh’s mediocre defense, the Brewers’ excellent plate discipline and bat-to-ball skills could be a problem, but Skenes’ relative struggles to produce ground balls should be mitigated by Milwaukee’s tendency to pound the ball into the ground. The splits aren’t really in his favor, as he’s been slightly worse on the road and the Brewers have been slightly better at home and against righties, but it’s Skenes; he should be effective regardless. Milwaukee’s patient plate approach could limit him to six or fewer innings, but the Pirates’ bullpen is good enough to hold a lead.

Meanwhile, although the Brewers have had a poor back end of the rotation, Woodruff, Jacob Misiorowski, and Chad Patrick haven’t been the issue. Woodruff had one bad outing, conceding eight hits and five earned runs in 5.2 innings of a road win over the Boston Red Sox, but since then, he’s allowed just two earned runs across 13 innings of work. Advanced stats back up his elite surface-level numbers, as his expected ERA (2.81) is in the 82nd percentile league-wide and he ranks in the 80th percentile in pitching run value. He’s also a particularly bad matchup against Pittsburgh, given that his most notable weaknesses are strikeout rate, whiff rate, and ground ball rate, and the Pirates are among the league’s worst teams in all of those stats. He also has favorable splits as a result of Milwaukee’s home-field advantage. As long as Woodruff can put together five solid innings, the Brewers’ bullpen could get it the rest of the way, as Uribe and Megill are both due for some regression to the mean.

Pittsburgh Pirates at Milwaukee Brewers pick, best bet

Best Bet: Pittsburgh Pirates Moneyline (-126)

Neither of these offenses is particularly well-suited to take advantage of either pitcher, but if it’s a pitcher’s duel, few pitchers are capable of bettering Skenes. Pittsburgh’s bullpen has also been better than Milwaukee’s this season.

Strong Lean: Paul Skenes U6.5 Strikeouts (-125)

It feels strange to pair a Pirates win with a relatively muted strikeout count from Skenes, but he hasn’t reached seven strikeouts yet this season and the Brewers very rarely whiff or strike out, ranking in the league’s bottom eight in both whiff rate and strikeout rate.