Yelich powers victory
Hits two home runs; Lyles returns for win
So this is the rotation
Mitch Keller can’t crack?
After yet another loss for
Pirates — 9- 7 to the Brewers Monday night at PNC
Park — it’s the question that’s impossible not to ask.
With this season very much a wash, the result of dropping 19 of 23 since the All- Star break, there has to be an eye to the future over the final two months.
The funny thing though is that we’re not hearing about Keller’s lack of preparedness or the need to develop a third pitch. The reason
he’s not here, general manager Neal Huntington said Sunday, is more about having a place to put their top prospect.
“As much as anything else, it’s about opportunity,” general manager Neal Huntington said Sunday. “With what [ Steven] Brault and [ Dario] Agrazal have done, it’s tough to move them out with the way they’ve pitched.”
Let’s hope that Huntington revisits those comments after what happened Monday, when Agrazal suffered through yet another poor start.
Agrazal went five innings and allowed five earned runs on eight hits. Over his past three starts, Agrazal has an 8.36 ERA with seven home runs allowed.
The problem in that time, oddly enough, has been throwing strikes. Bad strikes. Flat pitches that lack purpose. Misses in the zone.
“The execution of the pitches in the zone are the ones that hurt him [ Monday] to some degree,” Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said.
Take a glance at the Pirates rotation, and you can make a case that Chris Archer, Joe Musgrove and Trevor Williams should keep pitching.
They need to find out what they have in Archer to decide whether or not to pick up his option for next year. Musgrove has been the team’s most consistent pitcher, with a 3.09 ERA in his eight starts preceding Sunday’s debacle. Williams pitched to a 1.38 ERA out of the break last year and needs work.
But Agrazal?
He put together four quality starts and should get a pat on the back for that, but the Pirates need not waste an opportunity to let Keller grow. Now is the opportunity for him to screw up and learn lessons, not next season when — by the front office’s own belief — they could again be contending.
Secondarily, a lack of opportunity shouldn’t get to be a thing when you have a 6.44 ERA; the Pirates entered Monday with that abysmal mark, which ranks 28th out of 30 teams.
Furthermore, Pirates pitchers have coughed up 32 home runs since the break. How much worse can it get?
The ironic thing about Monday’s loss was that it came against the pitcher Agrazal seemingly pushed out of the Pirates rotation, Jordan Lyles.
Knowing Lyles was on an expiring contract, the Pirates flipped him to Milwaukee last week for Class AA reliever Cody Ponce.
Making his second start this season for the Brewers, Lyles worked five innings and allowed three runs ( one earned) on two hits, both home runs. He even had an RBI and made a nifty diving play to end the third inning.
Brewers right fielder Christian Yelich hit two rockets, his league- leading 38th and 39th. Mike Moustakas had one, too.
“The things that happened in the game are obviously things that I don’t want to happen,” Agrazal said through translator Mike Gonzalez. “I continue to work hard to do everything possible to prevent that from continuing.”
The Brewers built a 5- 0 lead before the Pirates closed to within 5- 3 on Pablo Reyes’ pinch- hit, two- run homer. Kevin Newman’s bases- clearing double in the eighth made it an 8- 6 game before Yelich’s second homer, and Starling Marte made things exciting by cutting the Pirates’ deficit to 9- 7 with his ninth- inning triple.