PITTSBURGH (AP) — Paul Skenes is a numbers nerd. Well, most of the time anyway.

The Pittsburgh Pirates ace will make it a point to glance up at the ribbon boards that instantaneously spew out the data following each pitch — velocity, drop, horizontal movement — to get a feel for whether the ball is doing what he wants it to do after it leaves his hands.

He considers the practice educational. A way for the former Air Force cadet who once majored in military strategy before transferring to LSU to decipher what's working and what's not during a given start.

Yet there are two numbers the 23-year-old insists he isn't paying much attention to, at least publicly anyway: his personal win-loss record.

Those numbers remained stuck at 7-9 following six occasionally fiery innings in what became a

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