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Pirates' bats chilled in 6-2 loss to Colorado Rockies

Matt Freed/Post-Gazette

Pirates' bats chilled in 6-2 loss to Colorado Rockies

The Pirates’ early suc­cess this sea­son largely has cen­tered on their of­fense. En­ter­ing a game Monday night against the Col­o­rado Rock­ies, they had scored 5.80 runs per game, good for fourth best in Ma­jor League Base­ball. They were tied for third in slug­ging per­cent­age and tied for fifth in hom­ers.

But on an­other cold night at PNC Park, the bats chilled, and the Pirates couldn’t get much go­ing against Rock­ies starter Ger­man Mar­quez in a 6-2 loss that dropped their record to 11-5.

In a game that started with a light dust­ing of snow, left-hander Steven Brault, mak­ing his third start, strug­gled to find con­sis­tency with his com­mand, al­low­ing five runs over six in­nings. The Rock­ies took a 2-0 lead in the first, cour­tesy of an RBI dou­ble by Chris Ian­netta, a wild pitch and a ground out to first. Brault set­tled in for con­sec­u­tive 1-2-3 in­nings in the sec­ond and third.

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“The com­mand was in­con­sis­tent over­all,” Pirates man­ager Clint Hur­dle said. “Some bet­ter se­quences in the sec­ond and third but started off in­con­sis­tent.”

Th­ings got away from Brault again in the fourth. He walked Ian Des­mond, and Car­los Gon­za­lez hit a hard grounder up the mid­dle that the de­fense couldn’t snare. Trevor Story then de­pos­ited a 2-2 slider over the left-field wall, and the Rock­ies led 5-0.

“I’ve al­ways felt con­fi­dent as a fielder,” Brault said of the mix-up on Gon­za­lez’s sin­gle. “And some­thing that I’ve been work­ing on is when a bouncer is go­ing up the mid­dle, it’s much eas­ier for them to just grab it, tag on sec­ond and go to first. I swear I looked back and Jordy [Mercer] was right up be­hind sec­ond, and I must have just blanked or some­thing. And so when that ball was hit and I de­cided to bring the glove back and then I looked back and we weren’t there, and I was like ‘Ah, that is [a] su­per bummer.’”

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The big­ger is­sue, as Brault noted, wasn’t the hit per se, but the fact that he couldn’t put away Story. In the case of Story’s three-run ho­mer and the two walks Brault is­sued, he got ahead of the bat­ters, 0-2, yet couldn’t re­tire them. He didn’t have “bite” on his slider, he said — hence why a pitch he hoped would end up in the dirt in­stead landed in the left-field seats.

“The pitches that I threw, I’m not up­set that I threw them,” Brault said. “I’m just up­set that I couldn’t ex­e­cute them, and that’s what it’s all about.”

The strug­gles aside, Brault was fairly ef­fi­cient, throw­ing 86 pitches, 54 for strikes, over the six in­nings, to go with one strike­out and five hits. In the sixth, Co­rey Dick­er­son dou­bled up Gon­za­lez and Des­mond for his league-lead­ing fourth out­field as­sist of the sea­son. Dick­er­son said Star­ling Marte yelled “tag” to him as he pre­pared to catch the ball, which helped ready him for the throw to sec­ond base.

“Dur­ing that pro­cess, as the ball is com­ing down, I’m able to get my feet un­der me and know what I wanted to do with the ball,” Dick­er­son said.

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Mar­quez, a 23-year-old right-hander, was mak­ing his first start since be­ing ejected for his role in a Rock­ies benches-clear­ing brawl with the San Diego Padres last week. (Nolan Arenado, the Rock­ies’ stel­lar third base­man, is serv­ing a sus­pen­sion for his part in the fight and will not play against the Pirates this week.)

Through 4⅓ in­nings, the Pirates had only one bas­e­run­ner, Marte, who reached on a walk and ad­vanced to third on a steal and a throw­ing er­ror. In the fifth, the Pirates started to crack Mar­quez. Fran­cisco Cervelli hit a tri­ple just be­yond Gon­za­lez’s out­stretched glove in right field, and he scored on Colin Moran’s sac­ri­fice fly. In the next in­ning, Marte tri­pled for the Pirates’ sec­ond hit, bring­ing home Gre­gory Polanco. Still, in to­tal, the Pirates had just four hits in the game and struck out 10 times. Dick­er­son ex­tended his hit­ting streak to 11 games with a sin­gle in the sev­enth.

“I think we could’ve had — def­i­nitely as a col­lec­tive group — could’ve had bet­ter ap­proaches at the plate, but he pitched a good ball­game,” Dick­er­son said. “We just got to him too late.”

Tyler Glas­now pitched two in­nings and al­lowed one run, a solo ho­mer to Char­lie Black­mon; it was Black­mon’s third con­sec­u­tive game with a ho­mer.

“We’ve got to throw more strikes,” Hur­dle said of Glas­now. “It’s two out of eight first-pitch strikes, it’s four three-ball counts. … Thirty-eight pitches in two in­nings, you’d like to see more pitch ef­fi­ciency as well, there’s just work to be done there.”

 

Elizabeth Bloom: ebloom@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1750 and Twitter @BloomPG.

First Published: April 17, 2018, 1:49 a.m.

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