Bucs earn another win in series against Diamondbacks.
Chavis, Alford hit homers for Pirates
Before Tuesday, JT Brubaker’s opponents had homered against him in nine of his past 10 starts, that’s 18 long balls.
Over that span, his ERA ballooned from 3.77 to 5.49 as he tied for the league lead in home runs allowed.
Brubaker has needed a bounceback start for a while, and he finally got one in the Pirates’ 4-2 win Tuesday against the Arizona Diamondbacks at PNC Park.
It still wasn’t pretty, necessarily. After a 1-2-3 first inning, Brubaker loaded the bases in the second, and put runners on second and third in the third. The Diamondbacks got runners on the corners against him in the fifth. The first were aided by wildness, as he walked three batters, one intentionally. The last one was on two singles, two of the four hits he allowed.
And yet, in that second-inning jam, he got Madison Bumgarner to line out sharply to third to avoid damage. In the third, he struck out David Peralta swinging. In the fifth, he
induced a flyout to center off the bat of Carson Kelly.
So no, it wasn’t the prettiest five-inning shutout effort, but it was enough to get Brubaker finally moving in the right direction again. Pitcher wins are fickle and a measurement of team success more than pitcher success in most cases. In this case, Brubaker ( 5- 13) earned his first win since May 29, a much-needed cause for celebration.
“Today felt like I was throwing like I was at the beginning of the year,” he said. “I think it goes back to that mentality thing, one pitch at a time. I think I kind of got away from it, where it got a little bit bigger on the scale of ‘now this hitter. Let’s get this hitter. Let’s get this hitter,’ instead of just focusing on executing the pitch that Stallings calls or I shake to. Making sure I execute that one. Try not to get too far ahead in this game, because then things happen, like that stretch I went on where you’ll hang some stuff, you’ll give up some long balls, you’ll give some big numbers in certain innings.”
Brubaker wasn’t the only Pirate who gained positive momentum. The newest Pirate, infielder Michael Chavis, was 0 for 4 in his debut Monday. It isn’t like that set him back and he was searching for answers, but he is looking for a franchise to stick with in the long term. The former top100 prospect with the Boston Red Sox was sent to the Pirates at the trade deadline in exchange for left-handed reliever Austin
Davis, after failing to get consistent playing time in Boston.
On Tuesday, Chavis showed his capabilities. He stepped into the box to lead off the third inning and hit one out of the yard, a mighty 429-foot blast into the concourse in left field. That power is a large part of his game. In his debut season with the Red Sox in 2019, he popped 18 homers in 95 games. That pace fell off in 2020 and the beginning of 2021, but when he was sent to the Pirates and played in Class AAA Indianapolis, he muscled five homers in 17 games.
“I know that I have power, and through the minors and up until this point, one thing I was working on was just letting it happen naturally and stop trying to produce the power, stop trying to force home runs and just let them happen,” Chavis said.
Outfielder Anthony Alford was similarly relieved to hit a homer Tuesday. He too put on a power show with Indianapolis this season, hitting 14 homers in 56 games. His problems in the majors, though, have been strikeouts. He has looked overmatched at times. In the fourth, though, with a runner on first, he jumped on an elevated fastball on the first pitch of his at-bat.
Alford skied it, with a 46degree launch angle. Those types of balls don’t usually leave the yard. Alford hit it in the perfect spot, though, tucking it inside the leftfield foul pole for a two-run homer.
A sacrifice fly from center fielder Bryan Reynolds plated the only other run for the Pirates in the third inning, but that’s all they needed.
Left- hander Chasen Shreve allowed a two-run homer in the eighth to cut the Pirates’ lead in half, but between Brubaker and right- handers Duane Underwood Jr., and Chris Stratton, the Diamondbacks were stymied, giving the Pirates’ their fourth win in their past five games.