PIRATES LOSE BATTLE TO CUBS
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CUBS 4, PIRATES 3
CHICAGO — Chris Archer had every reason to celebrate what he did Friday at Wrigley Field. He commanded his fastball. He got ahead in counts. He threw four pitches, including a revamped curveball. He looked like the elite pitcher the Pirates acquired in July 2018.
And yet Archer left for the day not with a smile on his face but with a foul taste in his mouth, the result of how his incredible start soured in a matter of pitches, both by him and two Pirates relievers.
The result was a bit of a mixed bag — an encouraging performance from a starting pitcher the Pirates need this sort of stuff from and a 4-3 loss that saw the Cubs take the first game of an important series.
“Yeah, it was nice,” Archer said. “But I want to finish it.”
That’s a perfectly acceptable way of looking at things if you’re Archer and you’re in the middle of competing. But for those of us on the outside, this should be seen as a gigantic leap forward.
If the Pirates, who began the day 2½ games out of first place, have any dreams of contending in the National League Central Division, they need Friday’s version of Archer, who lugged a 5.49 ERA into Wrigley Field.
Since the trade, Archer admitted in recent days, he hasn’t been himself. He has tried too much to conform to the Pirates way of pitching and gotten away from what makes him good.
Racking up strikeouts and devaluing pitch-efficiency isn’t the way most Pirates pitchers operate, but Archer is different. For maybe the first time as a member of this team, he pitched like it, too.
By going heavy on his four-seam fastball, Archer got ahead of Cubs hitters and let his slider play off of that. Of the 10 hitters Archer fanned — his first double-digit strikeout game since July 22, 2018 and the 29th of his career — six came via slider.
In the process, Archer picked up the 1,300th strikeout of his career.
“Fantastic performance, the kind you’re looking for from Chris,” manager Clint Hurdle said. “That’s as well as we’ve seen him pitch in a Pirates uniform.”
The scary part about Archer’s outing, in which he threw 80 percent (75 of 97) fourseam fastballs and sliders, is that it might be the start of something bigger, the result of what happened with Archer’s curveball.
In pitching, it’s a general rule to have about a 10-mph drop from your fastball to any sort of breaking stuff; Archer, who throws an exceptionally hard (but very good) slider, is an outlier. He has about a 6mph drop.
So during bullpen work between starts, Jacob Stallings has been pushing Archer to refine his curve and give hitters a change-ofpace pitch to worry about. Archer has reciprocated by tinkering with his arm slot, finally settling on something that worked.
“It looked good in the ‘pen,” Stallings said. “I told him, ‘Hey, I’m gonna call it.’ They didn’t do anything against it [Friday].”
Archer threw the curve five times. Twice Cubs hitters swung and missed, and there were two called strikes. On one, Archer flipped it in at just 79.4 mph — a huge drop in velocity.
The pitch will never be Archer’s bread and butter; he has his four-seamer and slider for that. But it’s something else for hitters to think about, and it’s a way to mess with hitters’ eyes when it comes to how and where he throws his slider.
“I had four good pitches going,” Archer said. “It was honestly a little frustrating I didn’t get through seven with the stuff I had Friday.”
As good as Archer’s stuff was, he hung a slider leading off the seventh inning to Kris Bryant, and Bryant didn’t miss. The homer to left made it 1-0.
Melky Cabrera had a chance to get Bryant out on a foul pop preceding the home run, but it was a very tough play — in the sun, up the first-base line where the stands basically jut out to the chalk.
A lack of control then further doomed the Pirates.
Michael Feliz took over for Archer and allowed a sacrifice fly before walking in a run, his command wavering.
After Starling Marte’s three-run blast got the Pirates back in the game, Kyle Crick walked two in the eighth, moving a man into scoring position for Jason Heyward, who singled the opposite way.
“If nobody’s on, it’s just a single,” Crick said. “That’s on me. I walked two guys, put a guy at second base. He hits a single through, that’s what happens.”
The loss dropped their record to 44-46 and cost them the chance to gain some valuable ground in the division. But if the ultimate takeaway from Friday’s game was Archer pitching more like himself, chances are the Pirates will take it.
“I definitely felt like myself, for sure,” Archer said. “When I feel like myself, I expect to get out of those situations in the seventh.”