Carmen Mlodzinski will take the mound for the Pirates on Monday as the Chicago Cubs make their first 2026 trip to PNC Park while mired in an eight-game losing streak.
The matchup pairs Mlodzinski, who is 4-3 with a 3.96 ERA, a 1.400 WHIP and a 2.98 FIP, against Ben Brown, who is 1-2 with a 2.09 ERA, a 0.983 WHIP and a 2.36 FIP. Monday’s start is the first of a four-game series in Pittsburgh that will be pivotal for a Cubs club desperate to halt a skid and for a Pirates team that has dropped six of its last nine games.
Those recent lines mask a curious season-to-date split: Pittsburgh entered the set 2-1 against Chicago. The early-season meetings at Wrigley Field were tight. The Pirates won the first game on April 10 on a two-run home run by Bryan Reynolds and followed with a 4-3 victory in 11 innings. The Cubs salvaged one on April 10 when Carson Kelly delivered a walk-off single to end the third contest of the season series.
The arithmetic of the matchup adds raw weight. The Cubs have lost eight straight overall, while the Pirates have lost six of nine — a simple snapshot that sets low expectations for both benches. Yet the longer view of the rivalry pulls in a different direction: Chicago has been unusually successful in Pittsburgh in recent years.
Since 2021 the Cubs are 27-9 in all games at PNC Park, and the franchise has racked up 596 wins in Pittsburgh dating back to the rivalry’s start in 1887. A four-game sweep this week would push that total to an even 600 regular-season victories in the Steel City. That sort of historical dominance sits uneasily next to the Cubs’ current form — they last swept a four-game set in Pittsburgh Aug. 1-4, 2011, and this is the team’s 13th four-game series there since that sweep.
For the Pirates, last season’s numbers against Chicago are humbling: Pittsburgh went 3-10 against the Cubs in 2025, and in 13 games they never scored more than four runs. The Bucs managed just one home victory over Chicago all of last year. Yet those historical limits have not prevented Pittsburgh from taking the early edge in 2026’s season series.
The pitching matchups sharpen the tension. Braxton Ashcraft is lined up as Pittsburgh’s Tuesday starter in the four-game set; he enters on the back of a strong outing in which he threw seven innings, struck out nine and allowed one earned run. Ashcraft’s season line sits at 3-2 with a 2.89 ERA, a 1.027 WHIP and a 3.16 FIP. That makes Tuesday’s game — currently listed as TBD for the Cubs’ starter versus Ashcraft — a consequential follow-up should Chicago fail to rebound Monday.
The friction here is plain: a Cubs team that has dominated in Pittsburgh in recent seasons arrives with the worst possible momentum, while a Pirates club that struggled heavily against Chicago in 2025 has already taken a 2-1 edge in the 2026 season series. If the Cubs’ history at PNC Park means anything, they should be favored to right the ship; if recent form and the season-series edge matter more, Pittsburgh could extend Chicago’s collapse.
What happens next is simple and immediate. Ben Brown’s start Monday is the first real answer — his low ERA this season argues he can halt the skid, but his 1-2 record shows the Cubs have not been converting quality pitching into wins. If Brown can hold the Pirates down, the Cubs will have a shot to stop eight straight losses and prevent Pittsburgh from turning the small early-season advantage into momentum. If not, the series will hand the Pirates a narrative boost that would complicate Chicago’s short-term outlook and make the quest for a 600th regular-season win in Pittsburgh a distant concern.
