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BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – JUNE 27: Jake Bennett #64 of the Boston Red Sox exits the game in the seventh inning against the New York Yankees at Fenway Park on June 27, 2026 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Jaiden Tripi\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
After going through the winning stretch that the Boston Red Sox<\/a> put together, you knew they would hit a bump in the road at some point. Little did anyone know that it would come against the Athletics and the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a>.<\/p>\n After dropping two of three to the Athletics at Fenway Park, Boston then dropped three of four to the Blue Jays in Canada. However, they avoided being swept with a 7-0 win on Thursday afternoon behind Payton Tolle<\/a> and Caleb Durbin.<\/p>\n The Red Sox will look to avoid a third straight series loss against the Pittsburgh Pirates<\/a> beginning on Friday night in Pennsylvania. Boston announced who will be their starting pitchers this weekend.<\/p>\n Boston Red Sox Announce Starters Against Pirates<\/p>\n Pittsburgh avoided a sweep at the hands of the Miami Marlins<\/a> on Thursday afternoon with a 13-1 win in South Florida. However, this will be the only series between the two teams this season. Here are the scheduled starters for both teams.<\/p>\n Friday: Jake Bennett (7-5, 3.17 ERA) vs. Bubba Chandler (5-8, 4.26 ERA), 6:40 p.m. Bennett was the only starter not to pitch in Toronto. He was acquired from the Washington Nationals<\/a> over the winter. Bennett has been a big addition given the injuries the starting rotation has dealt with this season. The 25-year-old has been roughed up in August, allowing seven earned runs in 11 innings against the Athletics and Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gray will come back on five days\u2019 rest and will be looking for his 15th win of the season on Saturday. The veteran right-hander worked six innings against Toronto on Monday night. He allowed two runs in a 2-1 loss.<\/p>\n On Sunday, Sandoval draws the assignment to go up against Paul Skenes. However, this hasn\u2019t been a great season for Skenes. He was roughed up on Opening Day against the New York Mets<\/a>, and things haven\u2019t gotten better. The 24-year-old reigning Cy Young Award winner<\/a> is two games below .500, but he does have 166 strikeouts in 134.2 innings.<\/p>\n Boston Red Sox Looking To Rebound Against Pittsburgh Pirates<\/p>\n Boston avoided disaster against the Blue Jays with a win on Thursday. The good news is that they avoided All-Star Braxton Ashcraft<\/a>, but they get Skenes on Sunday. The Red Sox went six days last time through the rotation; however, they are going on the normal five days this time around.<\/p>\n After this series, Boston returns home to host the Arizona Diamondbacks<\/a> and San Francisco Giants<\/a>.\u00a0 This is a chance to gain some ground on the New York Yankees<\/a>. The Red Sox are three games back for the first wild-card spot. They do have a four-game series at the end of the month in the Bronx. Home-field advantage in the wild-card round would be huge.<\/p>\n Furthermore, Pittsburgh has faded in the National League wild-card race. They have lost seven of their last 10 games and are now six games out and fading fast. Pittsburgh has not won a series since taking two out of three from the Cleveland Guardians<\/a> coming out of the All-Star break.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tScott Roche<\/a> Scott Roche covers college football, NFL, NBA and MLB for Heavy.com and has three decades of sports writing, covering everything from college to professional sports. More about Scott Roche<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – JUNE 27: Jake Bennett #64 of the Boston Red Sox exits the game in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-266295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSaturday: Sonny Gray (14-3, 2.79 ERA) vs. Jared Jones (2-4, 5.03 ERA), 7:15 p.m.
\nSunday: Patrick Sandoval (1-1, 3.30 ERA) vs. Paul Skenes (9-11, 3.88 ERA), 1:35 p.m.<\/p>\n