PADRES BATS REMAIN QUIET IN PITTSBURGH
Musgrove exits after four innings, hitters seem to take whole night off against Bucs
About the worst thing that can be said about Joe Musgrove’s outing Wednesday night is that it was a little short and wasn’t historic.
The big right-hander followed up his no-hitter five days earlier by throwing 81 pitches and allowing one run on in just four innings.
“Physically, I struggled to recover from that last outing,” he said. “I hadn’t had that many ups and downs and that many pitches in a while.”
He felt strong before the game, felt good in a long first inning. He came out for the second and felt like he was “under water.” His arm felt “slow.” He was using his body too much.
“I was just competing,” Musgrove said. “I knew with the offense we have, if I kept us in the game, we had a chance to win the game.”
That’s a nice thought and will likely be true again one day. But not right now.
The Pirates scored four runs off two of the five relievers who followed Musgrove, which was more than enough as the Padres offense continued its deep freeze in the moments that are hottest in a second straight loss to the Pirates, 5-1 at PNC Park.
The Padres broke a streak of 11 hitless at-bats with runners in scoring position when Tommy Pham lined a one-out single to center field in the sixth inning to drive in Manny Machado from second base.
That cut their deficit to 2-1. But after Pham promptly stole second base, Jurickson Profar and Jake Cronenworth struck out looking at full-count pitches.
To that point, the Padres were 1for-7 with runners in scoring position on the night and 13-for-77 over the past 10 games.
They would not get another chance with a runner on second or third, but they would hit into two more double plays.
Victor Caratini walked with one out in the seventh, and that inning ended a pitch later when pinch-hitter Wil Myers grounded into a double play.
Profar’s ninth-inning single was the Padres’ sixth hit of the night, but that inning (and the game) also ended a pitch later when Cronenworth grounded into a double play — the Padres’ third of the night and sixth in two days and major leagueleading 17th of the season.
“We’re definitely — I don’t know what the word is — struggling to score runs,” manager Jayce Tingler said. “We’re just not stringing enough, squaring up enough balls consistently.”
Trailing just 2-1 when their top three batters in the order went down
in the eighth, the Padres came to bat in the ninth trailing 5-1 after the Pirates scored three runs off Austin Adams. Pittsburgh’s other run, which gave the Bucs a 2-0 lead, was scored in the fifth inning against Pierce Johnson.
Musgrove did have the worst of his three starts this season — the fewest innings, the most runs, most hits, most walks.
The chances were excellent that anything Wednesday was going to be a dropoff from what he had done previously.
He hadn’t allowed a hit in 11 days, hadn’t given up a run since September.
On Wednesday night against the team for which he played the three previous seasons, he walked his first two batters of the season and allowed his first home run, a shot to right field by Gregory Polanco in the second inning, among the four hits he surrendered.
Polanco’s 375-foot blast, which came about 20 feet from leaving the stadium and bouncing into the Alleghany River, stopped Musgrove’s scoreless streak at 32 innings.
“Trying to put on a good swing,” Polanco said of his rip at a 93 mph fastball up and in. “He missed a pitch and I swung it. … He’s our friend, he’s our guy. You know he’s coming from that no-hitter, so this means a lot.”
Adam Frazier led off the second inning with a double before Musgrove retired the next three batters. A walk to Kevin Newman and single by Polanco put runners at the corners with no outs in the fourth before Dustin Fowler popped out, Michael Perez became Musgrove’s sixth strikeout victim and pitcher Tyler Anderson grounded out.
With Musgrove having thrown a career-high 112 pitches Friday, it was not a surprise when Jorge Mateo pinch-hit for him in the top of the fifth.
“I thought he was outstanding,” Tingler said of Musgrove. “He had to pitch with his heart. He certainly didn’t have his best stuff . ... For him to battle, honestly, I thought he made some really good pitches.”
Musgrove’s pitches seemed mostly on par with what he threw Friday, if not quite with the same command. His cutter, so effective against lefties as he tossed 15 shutout innings over his first two starts, in particular leaked a bit. Attempting to preserve pitches because he knew his pitch limit was low given his recent workload, he also threw his fastball twice as much Wednesday as he had in his no-hitter. The Pirates’ left-handed batters were 2-for-2 against the pitch and didn’t miss any of the five swings they took on fastballs.
The team he faced Wednesday was intent on not chasing bad pitches and fighting off pitches they couldn’t put in play.
The Rangers on Friday had just eight two-strike fouls in 28 batters. The Pirates’ 18 batters fouled off 12 two-strike pitches. Musgrove had just three threeball counts in Texas and twice that many Wednesday. The Rangers had just six of their 28 plate appearances last longer than five pitches. Seven of the Pirates’ 18 plate appearances against him lasted at least six pitches, including Colin Moran’s 11pitch strikeout in Musgrove’s 22-pitch first inning.
“They put together some really good at-bats,” Musgrove said. “Moran especially in that first inning gave me a long battle. I thought I was throwing some really good pitches and he was finding a way to fight them off. I thought they showed signs of putting together a team approach and making me work and not giving me the easy quick outs out of the zone.
“I also didn’t feel my stuff was that sharp. Had it been a little sharper, we could have controlled the outs a little more. But overall, I thought I did a decent job of keeping us in the game and competing with what I had.”