Pirates vs. Dodgers Prediction: Can Pittsburgh Slow Down Skubal and LA’s Win Streak?

The Dodgers have won four straight and just walked off Pittsburgh in extras. Can the Pirates' bats solve Tarik Skubal, or does LA roll on Saturday night?

Adam Hutchinson August 22, 2026

The Dodgers have won four straight and just walked off the Pirates in extras — now Pittsburgh has to face Tarik Skubal with almost no margin for error.

Quick take:
Pick: Dodgers -1.5
Why: Skubal’s 2.85 ERA against a Pirates lineup batting .234 over its last 10 games is a brutal matchup on paper.
The number to watch: Skubal has struck out 135 batters in his starts this year against a Pittsburgh order that strikes out at one of the higher clips in the league.

Saturday night at Dodger Stadium is the middle game of a series the Pirates arrived at already playing from behind. Los Angeles took the opener 5-4 in 10 innings on Friday, with Oneil Cruz’s game-tying homer in the eighth the lone highlight of an otherwise deflating night for Pittsburgh. The Dodgers, now 78-51 and sitting nine games clear of San Diego atop the NL West, have won four in a row and gone 7-3 over their last 10. The Pirates, at 63-67, are playing out the string of a season that’s long since fallen 17 games back in the NL Central.

That gap in stakes shows up in the pitching matchup, too.

The Market Isn’t Buying an Upset

Books have the Dodgers as sizable favorites, with the moneyline sitting around -259 to -269 and the run line at -1.5 (-114). Pittsburgh gets the plus-money look at +1.5 (-105), and the total has settled at 7.5 with the under drawing slightly better action. None of that is surprising given the pitching matchup: Tarik Skubal (7-7, 2.85 ERA, 135 strikeouts, 0.96 WHIP) starts for LA against Jared Jones (2-5, 4.78 ERA, 72 strikeouts, 1.20 WHIP) for Pittsburgh. Jones’ team is 6-8 against the spread in his starts this season, while Skubal’s Dodgers have actually been a modest 6-13 ATS in his outings — a small crack in an otherwise lopsided line, and about the only thing keeping the number from drifting even further toward LA.

Why the Pirates’ Offense Is the Real Problem

Pittsburgh’s lineup has scuffled at exactly the wrong time, hitting just .234 as a team over its last 10 games with a five-game losing streak buried in that stretch against the Mets and Marlins. Bryan Reynolds has been the one consistent bat, sitting at .261 with 15 home runs, 66 RBI and a .797 OPS, and he led the National League in doubles during the month of August. Oneil Cruz has quietly been the more dangerous power threat lately — he’s up to 15-16 home runs and a .826-plus OPS on the year, and his eighth-inning shot Friday was the only run Pittsburgh’s offense could scratch out against a deep Dodgers bullpen for most of that game. But depth is the issue: with Endy Rodriguez, Konnor Griffin and Ryan O’Hearn all out, the lineup around Reynolds and Cruz is thin, and Skubal isn’t the pitcher a struggling offense wants to face to snap out of it.

Skubal has walked just 20 batters in his starts all season against 135 strikeouts — a nearly 7-to-1 ratio that gives Pittsburgh almost no free baserunners to work with.
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That kind of command turns a shaky Pirates lineup into a low-scoring night almost by default. Los Angeles isn’t without its own issues — Andy Pages left Friday’s game after getting hit on the hand, and the Dodgers are already without Tyler Glasnow, Will Smith, Edwin Diaz and Justin Wrobleski. Still, a lineup that runs out Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts and Kyle Tucker has more than enough thunder to cover for those absences against a Pirates pitching staff that’s allowed the fourth-most runs in the league this year.

Prediction and Best Bet

Skubal’s strikeout stuff and the Dodgers’ four-game winning streak both point the same direction, and Pittsburgh’s offense hasn’t shown it can consistently solve pitchers of this caliber. If you’re grabbing a number before kickoff, it’s worth a glance at the latest DraftKings promo code before locking anything in.