Cardinals slip past Pirates, 4-3
Defeat locks down another losing season
Spoiler isn’t the right word, general manager Ben Cherington said before Friday’s game. It’s more the fact that the Pirates, miles away from the playoffs, want to make sure these games matter. To them.
They want to ensure they’re preparing the right way and doing their best to take advantage of every opportunity. If they can irritate or upset a few teams along the way, even better.
The Cardinals, a division rival clinging tightly to wild-card hopes, would certainly qualify as one of those teams. The Pirates threatened and made things interesting Friday, especially against St. Louis’ wobbly bullpen, but Pittsburgh ultimately came up a hair short in a 4-3 loss at PNC Park.
The loss, which guaranteed another losing season, highlighted sort of where the Pirates (47-82) are right now — focused on running down a couple top teams, with players eager to prove themselves, but also lacking enough firepower to do that constantly.
“Everybody is playing for something,” said Jacob Stallings, who had three hits. “Especially on our team, we don’t have many
under-contract guys or veterans who know they’re going to have a job next year, frankly.
“All the personal goals, wheneveryou’re winning, a lot more of those goals are typically met. I think everybody has been having fun lately. Hopefully we can keep playing well.”
A night after the Pirates could do no wrong, scoring eight times without an out during a wacky seventh inning, they lacked a big break in this one.
They closed the gap to one in the eighth after Michael Chavis led off with a double, and Colin Moran smacked a first-pitch fastball to center for a single. It looked as if the Pirates might tie the score when Kevin Newman lined a twoout single to center. But Moran was thrown out at home plate by several steps.
Anthony Alford led off the ninth with a single and stole second. But Bryan Reynolds and Ben Gamel struck out looking before Ke’Bryan Hayes grounded out to short to end the game.
The Pirates scored runs in the fifth and sixth but also stranded five. Gamel’s liner had hope, but Cardinals second baseman Tommy Edman made a terrific, diving grab. Alford struck out with the bases loaded an inning later.
“We lacked the big hit,” manager Derek Shelton said. “We continued to come back. We got the hit in the eighth, but other than that, we had opportunities to score and we just did not break this game open.”
The decision to send Moran might be criticized, but it really shouldn’t be. Given their record and inability to consistently score runs, what’s wrong with taking a chance there? So what if Moran isn’t fast. The way this season has gone, who knows when their next chance to score might come.
Could be days.
“Two outs, you’re going to make them make a throw,” Shelton said. “If that ball hits the mound and kicks away or he makes a bad throw, you’re like, ‘With two outs, why didn’t you send him?’ It’s easy to second-guess that, but I thought that was the right send.”
One bit of good news from this one was that Dillon Peters was pretty solid. He cruised through four, then got touched for three runs in the fifth, on back-toback doubles and an Edman homer.
The second of those twobaggers came on a changeup up, no big deal, but the fastball Peters threw to Edman leaked out over the plate.
The Pirates got one back in the bottom of the fifth thanks to another extrabase hit from Yoshi Tsutsugo, who … looked a little less than comfortable in right field. Tsutsugo lowbridged himself at one point and looked flat-out lost on a ball hit by Paul
Goldschmidt. But his triple there was big.
Stallings singled and advanced to second on a throwing error by Edman. Tsutsugo, who has shown more comfort handling fastballs than breaking stuff, drove a low-and-outside slider to center, scoring Stallings.
Tsutsugo now has eight hits in 11 games as a member of the Pirates, with seven of those going for extra bases. Tsutsugo also has seven RBIs. Unfortunately for the Pirates, they could not add on, which the Cardinals did thanks to Paul DeJong’s triple and a sac fly in the seventh.
While the Pirates want to push offensively and jumble the playoff race from the outside, they also need to find some pitching, and Peters has proven to be interesting thus far in his three starts.
Peters didn’t walk a batter, threw 53 of his 78 pitches for strikes and struck out four. Most impressive might’ve been Peters’ changeup, which
generated nine of his 13 whiffs.
The pitch averages 84-85 mph, which isn’t a huge drop from his sinker and four-seamer (both 90-91 mph), but the arm action is extremely similar, which can create awkward swings and misses because the hitter thinks it’s a fastball out of his hand.
A 28-year-old the Pirates got for cash from the Angels on July 19, Peters has now pitched to a 3.68 ERA in three starts totaling 14⅔ innings, walking two and striking out 10. He has solid stuff, and there’s also a willingness or ability to consistently fill up the zone, which serves him well.
“He tried to execute some pitches off the plate and left them in, on the plate,” Shelton said. “Because of that, he ended up paying for it a little bit. Overall, I thought he threw the ball pretty well. He continued to attack. He continued to use his fastball.”