Losses continue to mount
Musgrove’s rough 5th leads to 7th in a row
ATLANTA — Joe Musgrove expressed confidence in his ability to get outs against Josh Donaldson after their altercation Monday. The first two times they squared off Thursday afternoon, Musgrove got outs. Then, Donaldson got the last laugh.
The Atlanta Braves third baseman hit a tiebreaking single in the fifth, the disastrous final inning for
Musgrove in the Pirates’ 6-5 loss Thursday afternoon. The loss was the seventh in a row for the Pirates; the win gave the Braves a sweep of the fourgame series and a seven-game winning streak.
Usually, Donaldson does not play day games after night games. And usually, Musgrove does not get a chance to face a team twice in the same series.
The opportunity for such a situation cropped up after Musgrove was ejected from the series opener Monday night. His 18th and final pitch was a chest-high fastball that grazed Donaldson, setting off a war of words between the two and causing both benches to empty.
“I was ready to go at him and attack him like I normally would. I put Monday behind me,” Musgrove said Thursday. “I can’t go out there with any of that stuff lingering in the back of my mind. I wasn’t trying to do anything different. I wasn’t trying to prove a point or do anything other than attacking him with my good stuff like I normally would.”
The Pirates and Musgrove entered the bottom of the fifth with a 2-1 lead after rookie Bryan Reynolds drove in Adam Frazier with a single in the third and catcher Elias Diaz doubled home Colin Moran in the fourth inning.
“Musgrove was very efficient through four,” Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said. “He was pitching strong. Changeup had some bottom to it. The slider played and the fastball had sink. Everything seemed to lose its late life toward the end of the fourth and definitely in the fifth inning.”
Donaldson’s key hit came after Musgrove walked Dansby Swanson and gave up a base hit to Freddie Freeman. Musgrove faced five Braves in the inning, got no outs
and yielded four runs before Ozzie Albies drove in Nick Markakis and Donaldson with a double to end Musgrove’s outing.
“I don’t know much experience he’s got with the situation we ran him through,” Hurdle said. “He had to get ready to start a game on Monday and then have to crank it up on Thursday. We were hoping to get five innings out of him and maybe 75 pitches.”
Geoff Hartlieb came on in relief and recorded three outs to end the fifth but that included former Pirate Matt Joyce’s run-scoring groundout. That run was charged to Musgrove.
The final line on Musgrove: four innings-plus, nine hits, six earned runs, two walks, and three strikeouts.
The Pirates, however, fought back. Corey Dickerson hit a ground-rule double that bounced off Joyce’s glove over the left-field wall to drive in Adam Frazier in the seventh. Kevin Newman then pushed his hitting streak to six games with a single, and he scored on a double by Reynolds that reduced the Pirates’ deficit to two runs.
Dovydas Neverauskas pitched two scoreless innings yielding only a walk.
Reynolds hit a two-out double in the ninth and scored on Starling Marte single. For the day, Reynolds had three hits and two RBIs. He has at least one hit in 16 of his past 17 starts.
In that 17-start stretch, he is is 27 for 72 with eight extra-base hits, 10 RBIs and 10 multiple-hit games.
“When you start taking it for granted you’re missing the boat of what is going on,” Hurdle said of Reynolds. “By no means do we take for granted what he’s been able to do. He stayed in the hunt today. He hits a couple of doubles late in the game and drives in runs. He’s done a lot of fun things.”
The Pirates are eight games under .500 at 30-38.
“We’ve shown an ability to fight,” Musgrove said. “It’s easy to tuck your tail between your legs and roll over when you’re losing consecutive games and go down 6-2. This team doesn’t do that.
“You have to try and grab some positives from the series. Look at the way we battled against a good team that is hot right now.”
The Pirates will carry their 0-7 record on this road trip into a three-game weekend series that begins Friday night in Miami against the Marlins.