Bats wake up, rout Phillies
Friday’s trade of Richard Rodriguez to the Atlanta Braves left the Pirates without a clear-cut closer in their bullpen. Maybe it will eventually be David Bednar, maybe someone else. Whomever gets the job, or if no one does, it’ll have to wait as manager Derek Shelton was noncommittal before Friday’s game.
But thanks to how well the Pirates played while opening a three-game series against the Phillies, figuring out who might close or if they’ll shift back to a bycommittee approach was hardly necessary.
After their offense cobbled together just four runs over the past four games, the Pirates broke out in a big way against their crossstate rivals, cruising to a 7-0 victory at PNC Park.
The win comes after a tumultuous week where general manager Ben Cherington swung six trades, five involving players on the active roster. This is also a month where the Pirates have just three days where they haven’t made some sort of trade or transaction.
Following Tuesday’s 9-0 loss, Cody Ponce talked about some of the uncertainty that permeated the Pirates clubhouse.
It had become a bit of a running joke to learn who might be coming up, who might be sent down, who was possibly traded or acquired and who did what involving the waiver wire. It created plenty of chatter but also uneasiness.
With the trade portion of that behind them, the focus for the Pirates should shift to things like we saw on Friday.
Stuff such as a terrific starting pitching performance from Wil Crowe, who went six scoreless
innings and continues to show improvement. Crowe is now 3-1 in his last eight starts while allowing two or fewer earned runs in six of those.
The 26-year-old righthander ranks fourth in both innings pitched (71⅔) and strikeouts (66) among starting pitchers in the National League.
Crowe featured a true four-pitch mix against the Phillies, throwing each one at least 20% of the time and striking out four.
Crowe’s only issue — and it was a minor one — involved walks. He gave out one free pass in the first and three in the fourth. Crowe got out of the later jam by getting center fielder Odubel Herrera to line out to short with two outs and the bases loaded.
The Pirates got offensive contributions from up and down their lineup, a welcome change consider they entered Friday hitting .146 over the past four games, striking out 28 times. They were also 0 for 17 with runners in scoring position while stranding 19.
That sort of ineptitude was halted while facing a Phillies team that still has visions of chasing down the Mets in the National League East.
Bryan Reynolds drove in
the first of three runs in the first with a triple to rightcenter. Typical Reynolds, too, the center fielder powering a low-and-outside curveball into a gap.
Gregory Polanco followed by lining another curveball past first baseman Brad Miller to make it 2-0, and Rodolfo Castro was credited with a ground-rule double that scored a run on the first of two headscratching plays made by Philadelphia’s Bryce Harper in right.
Harper appeared to misjudge the ball off the bat of Castro. It bounced off the warning track and sailed into the stands. It was the first hit of Castro’s career that was not a home run.
The Pirates didn’t stop there, either. Ke’Bryan Hayes ambushed a firstpitch fastball from Phillies starter Vince Velasquez and sent it screaming into the left-center gap for a 4-0 lead in the second. Polanco stretched the lead to 5-0 later in the frame by lining a low-and-inside slider off the Clemente Wall.
Entering the game with a .518 OPS, the lowest for any Pirates hitter (among qualifying hitters) in the modern era of franchise history, Kevin Newman smacked a two-run double in the fifth inning, turning this one into a 7-0 rout.
Those runs were more than enough for Crowe, who did an excellent job of pounding the strike zone and making sure his tempo stayed up. The Pirates have scored 26 runs for Crowe in his past three starts.
The outing was important because the Pirates were looking to snap a fourgame losing streak, but also because starting pitching figures to be a focal point coming out of the deadline.
Chad Kuhl and JT Brubaker will keep their spots. It’s also likely that one of the newest Pirates, Bryse Wilson from the Braves, will get an opportunity.
Mitch Keller returned to the team on Friday, and Steven Brault will almost assuredly make his season debut next week.
Keller back in bigs
Starting pitcher Mitch Keller is back in Pittsburgh, recalled by the Pirates prior to Friday’s game.
In eight games (six starts) in Class AAA, the righthander went 1-1 with a 3.21 ERA. Keller went 3-7 in 12 MLB starts before he went down, pitching to a 7.04 ERA.
Keller could be in line for a start. The Pirates have “TBA” listed in their game notes for Sunday in the series finale against the Phillies.
At some point along the way in Indianapolis, Keller stopped pitching out of the windup and went exclusively out of the stretch.
“I think it’s getting a little more athleticism and being a little bit quicker out of the stretch. So I did that, and I feel like I’ve been doing pretty well, throwing a lot of strikes, filling it up,” Keller said.