Freefall continues, Williams struggles in 8- 3 loss
Give the Pirates this: They’ve continued to find fresh and innovative ways to lose baseball games.
Although they arrived at PNC Park Wednesday having dropped 20 of their past 24 games, seven were one- run losses. Another seven came by five or more runs. Sometimes, it’s pitching. Other times. it’s fielding or fundamentals. The offense has struggled plenty, too.
Wednesday night, an 8- 3 defeat to the Milwaukee Brewers featured a little bit of
everything, as the Pirates stretched their current run of ineptitude to more than 15 percent of an MLB season, losing for the 21st time in 25 games since the All- Star break.
“A lot of us are searching right now,” Trevor Williams said. “A lot of us are trying to keep our head above water. It’s been a really tough stretch for us.”
A night after a mental mistake by Elias Diaz in the ninth inning cost them a close game, the Pirates never had a chance Wednesday.
Williams has dominated the Brewers
much of his career, pitching to a 1.38 ERA against them in five career starts, but that mattered little as Milwaukee pretty much teed off on him.
The Brewers ( 60- 56) built a 5- 0 lead after the first three innings, and second baseman Keston Hiura hit his second home run of the game — both coming off Williams — to make it 6- 1 in the fifth.
It was a bit of a step backward for Williams, who had given the Pirates back- toback quality starts. After missing time this season for a few different reasons, Williams was looking forward to settling down and having a strong second half.
On Hiura’s first homer, a two- run shot in the top of the first, Williams left a fourseamer elevated and out over the plate. Hiura clobbered it to right center.
After Ryan Braun tripled into the right- field corner to lead off the second, Ben Gamel’s sacrifice fly gave the Brewers a 3- 0 lead. Eric Thames made it 5- 0 by pulling an outside changeup to right for a two- run single in the third.
“I made too many mistakes over the white part of the plate,” Williams said.
Jacob Stallings answered with a solo home run, but that was one of the only pieces of loud contact for the Pirates against the Brewers, who were cobbling together pitching after Zach Davies was scratched from this start and placed on the 10- day injured list because of back spasms.
The second home run Williams allowed to Hiura came on another elevated fourseamer. Hiura put it to the left of the shrubbery in center. Pirates starting pitchers now have allowed 33 home runs in 25 games since the All- Star break, third- worst in all of baseball.
If poorly placed pitches weren’t enough, the Pirates also made a couple of truly terrible plays in the field.
Both came on potential double plays. In the sixth, Jose Osuna threw wide of second base, the ball trickling into shallow left field. In the seventh, with Kevin Newman flipping to second, Pablo Reyes had the feed tick off the outside of his glove for another error.
Whether it was Colin Moran inexplicably throwing to first the way he did Monday or Diaz failing to realize that he was directly in the middle of the baseline, Pirates fielders have been at their fundamental worst the past couple of days.
“It’s tough right now,” Felipe Vazquez said. “It’s not just one guy. It’s the whole team. We’re not winning games. We’re just trying to stay positive.”
To their credit, the Pirates kept at it and scratched out a couple of runs in the seventh.
Stallings walked and scored on Bryan Reynolds’ single. Starling Marte, who has been one of the Pirates’ few reliable sources of offense out of the break, drove in Newman, who had reached base on a throwing error.
This stretch obviously has been depressing, zapping whatever optimism that existed around this team a couple of weeks ago, but it’s also been sort of confounding.
No matter what the Pirates do, they seemingly go out of their way to find ways to lose game. The losses can be diagnosed and the small bright spots pointed out, but the bigger picture isn’t pretty.
“I’m sure there are some guys in there questioning some of the things that are going on as far as why they’re not getting the results that they want,” manager Clint Hurdle said. “However, you still get to do this. There’s people out there who would trade for it in a heartbeat.
“Can it be challenging? Yeah, absolutely. But nobody is going to feel sorry for you. At the end of the day, a lot of people don’t care. They just want results. We need to play better.”