Kuhl gets his first start in more than two years
With the Pirates badly in need of a spark, manager Derek Shelton has decided to give his starting rotation the finger.
The healthy right index finger of Chad Kuhl, that is, as the right-hander will start the series opener Friday against the Detroit Tigers at PNC Park.
It originally was listed in the team’s official game notes that Steven Brault would start, but Shelton said that was a miscommunication on his end. It’ll instead be Kuhl, who’s making his first Major League Baseball start since 2018.
After two times through the rotation where Brault took the ball first in their piggyback situation, Kuhl will get a crack at Detroit’s righthander-heavy lineup, a group that hasn’t played since Sunday because of the St. Louis Cardinals’ COVID19 outbreak.
“I think we said all along when we were going back and forth with those guys that we would mix up the starts of how they were doing it,” Shelton said Thursday before the series finale against the Minnesota Twins at PNC Park. “We just felt that it was a good opportunity for Chad to start.”
Part of that is because of how Kuhl’s finger has cooperated since he left his previous outing Sunday against the Chicago Cubs after just 1⅓ innings with an abrasion to the cuticle on his right index finger.
Kuhl said he felt something tear on his next-to-last warm-up pitch in the fifth inning. The nail cut into the cuticle, drawing blood and making it harder for Kuhl to put enough pressure on the ball to control his pitches.
“I wasn’t doing myself any favors or doing the team any favors trying to be stubborn and go through it,” Kuhl said.
And no, Kuhl said, that wasn’t easy. He pitched through an injury to the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, recording two outs with his arm dangling, but had to come out of the game with a fingernail issue.
“I got two more outs in New York [June 26, 2018, his final start before Tommy John surgery] and I couldn’t muscle through this, so it’s a little bit of a frustrating thing,” Kuhl said. “But we’ll get through it.”
For how much longer becomes the bigger question.
Aside from the finger issue, Kuhl has been very good, pitching to a 1.80 ERA in five innings and striking out five. The velocity and location has been there, while Kuhl has shown improved command of his curveball.
It also has been a solid couple of outings for Brault, who hasn’t been scored upon in his five innings while retiring all nine men he faced the previous time out at Wrigley Field.
With the Pirates bullpen in a heap of trouble, the Pirates conceivably could split up the piggyback, although Shelton said they’re not there yet.
And if/when they do, don’t look for either Kuhl or Brault to shift to a late-inning bullpen role. They’re likely to remain starters.
“Kuhl and Brault need to throw,” Shelton said. “We talked about that coming in for next year. They need to be lengthened out so you put them in shorter-inning stints. So, for their actual development, it’s better where they are right now.”
One example of that occurred with Brault, who quickly fixed a flaw in the transition between his first start and the second.
In video work after he went two scoreless innings July 27 against Milwaukee, Brault said he and pitching coach Oscar Marin noticed something he was doing with his right foot in his delivery that was causing him to fall forward. After addressing it in the bullpen, the problem was gone against the Cubs.
Around the horn
• Shelton said the Pirates held a meeting Thursday before the game to address MLB’s adjusted health and safety protocols in the wake of outbreaks with the Miami Marlins and Cardinals. Brault had a funny line on the topic: “It’s a simple thing, put a mask on. It’s not that hard.”
• The decision to option Guillermo Heredia and Jose Osuna to Altoona didn’t have as much to do with performance as the fact that the Pirates need pitching. “We need to preserve as much pitching as possible,” Shelton said. “With the fact that we’ve had five relievers and a starter go down, we just felt that maintaining pitching depth was the best option for us.”