Livvy Dunne’s boyfriend Paul Skenes gives brutal verdict on his Pirates manager getting fired

The Pittsburgh Pirates’ decision to fire manager Derek Shelton just 38 games into the season may have surprised some in and around baseball, but not All-Star pitcher Paul Skenes.

‘We’re 12-26,’ the reigning National League Rookie of the Year told reporters a few hours before Pittsburgh improved to 13-26 with Friday’s win over Atlanta. ‘Someone’s got to be held accountable. And unfortunately, right now, it’s him.

‘That’s just kind of how it goes. But I don’t know that it fixes the root of the issue, which is we need to play better.’

Skenes, a pitching sensation and the boyfriend of Instagram celebrity Livvy Dunne, is most certainly not the problem.

Although his record is just 3-4 for the year, Skenes ranks 20th in the majors with a 2.77 earned-run average and boasts an impressive 0.95 WHIP (walks and hits per inning), which is better than all but 10 hurlers this season.

Rather, the bulk of the problem rests with the Pirates’ league-worst offense, where new manager Don Kelly will have his work cut out for him.

The Pittsburgh-area native has spent the last two-plus decades authoring an unlikely success story that has carried him from a downtown liberal arts college to nearly a decade in the big leagues as a utility player who got by more on intelligence than innate talent.

Now comes a task far different but no less daunting than any Kelly faced as a player: trying to find a way to breathe life into his hometown team’s flailing season.

The last-place Pirates are a mess, both on and off the field. On Thursday, general manager Ben Cherington fired and handed Kelly a mop, asking the club’s longtime bench coach to bring some of his ‘teacher’s heart’ to the job as Shelton’s replacement.

It’s equal parts humbling and exciting for someone who grew up 5 miles south of Three Rivers Stadium and used to trick-or-treat at Hall of Fame manager Jim Leyland’s house in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

So there were butterflies as Kelly made the drive to PNC Park on Friday ahead of the start of Pittsburgh’s weekend series against Atlanta. A touch of anxiousness, too.

Those jitters will soon fade away as the 45-year-old Kelly tries to coax more out of an underperforming roster that hasn’t played like the group most in the organization felt was on the cusp of contending when the season began six weeks ago.

The Pirates took a small – very, very small – step in the right direction in Kelly’s debut, using a pair of homers from the bottom of the lineup and six shutout innings from Bailey Falter to edge the Braves 3-2 .

Kelly received the customary postgame celebration, getting doused in ice-cold water that did little to dampen his enthusiasm after one of the more solid performances by Pittsburgh this season.

‘It’s safe to say that I feel like everyone was kinda playing for [Kelly] tonight,’ Falter said.

At least one Pirates fan joked about Dunne replacing Shelton in Pittsburgh. 

‘Already a fan of his replacement,’ the X user wrote alongside a phony graphic claiming that Dunne was the new  Pirates manager. 

While Skenes labors at the beginning of what looks to be a brutal season in Pittsburgh, Dunne hit the sands of Florida’s Hutchinson Island South, where she was photographed in a leopard-print bikini.

Fresh out of college, Livvy is starting off on her own after calling it a career on her time in gymnastics.

An injury sustained in her final season of college led to the fifth-year senior gymnast deciding to focus more on her social media and modeling career than sports.

It doesn’t mean we won’t be seeing any less of Livvy around the world of sports though.

Earlier this month, Dunne was spotted at Churchill Downs for both the Kentucky Oaks and the Kentucky Derby.