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Pirates outfielders Bryan Reynolds, Starling Marte and Melky Cabrera celebrate after defeating the Brewers Saturday, July 6, 2019 at PNC Park.
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Improbable storylines just keep coming for the Pirates

Matt Freed/Post-Gazette

Improbable storylines just keep coming for the Pirates

Don’t try to pre­dict base­ball. It’s a waste of time. Pitts­burgh weather, fine. Maybe even some lot­tery num­bers. But this? Spit­ting into the wind might pro­duce bet­ter re­sults.

The fresh­est ex­am­ple of what a wild ride a base­ball sea­son can be came Satur­day with the Pirates’ 12-2 vic­tory over the Mil­wau­kee Brew­ers at PNC Park, set­ting up a Sun­day show­down for the se­ries and some se­ri­ous mo­men­tum head­ing into the All-Star break.

Dario Agrazal went six in­nings, Kevin New­man and Colin Moran each had four hits and drove in three runs, and the Pirates (43-45) keep nip­ping at the heels of the Na­tional League Cen­tral Divi­sion’s best.

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“We’re here to win games,” New­man said. “We’re just try­ing to go out there and get wins ev­ery night and hope­fully make things real in­ter­est­ing.”

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The Pirates, now win­ners in 13 of their past 20, have done that this sea­son. In spades.

Just look at the afore­men­tioned story lines. New­man and Moran were back­ups out of spring train­ing, stuck be­hind Erik Gon­za­lez and Jung Ho Kang.

Yeah, so much for that.

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They’ve hit and hit and hit, and they’ve forced man­ager Clint Hur­dle to keep them in the lineup be­cause of how they’ve helped the of­fense, which has mor­phed into one of MLB’s best.

Moran is up to 49 RBIs on the sea­son and trails only Josh Bell when it comes to how he has hit with run­ners in scor­ing po­si­tion — .355 be­fore Satur­day. New­man was a shell of him­self last sea­son but took the win­ter to recal­i­brate his eat­ing and trans­form his body.

Now, New­man chugs at least two pro­tein shakes per day, and his wife — Shayne — has helped by cook­ing a ton of ex­tra pasta (Kevin’s fa­vor­ite) to make sure there’s al­ways a late-night snack avail­able.

“He bounced back over the win­ter,” Hur­dle said of New­man. “He was worn down when he got here.

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“He got stron­ger, put some weight on, added some mus­cle, some strength, worked on his swing. He came in in much bet­ter form and shape. He’s just been play­ing.

“This is the most con­fi­dent he’s prob­a­bly been as a hit­ter in a Pirates uni­form.”

At the be­gin­ning of the sea­son, no­body had New­man start­ing at short, and surely no sane per­son had him clob­ber­ing six home runs, at least out­side of his time spent on xBox or PlaySta­tion.

But whether it’s been in the leadoff spot or lower in the or­der, New­man has tapped into a re­source of power that few thought he had.

“I don’t know,” New­man said. “Been in the weight room a lit­tle bit more this year. Maybe that’s where it’s com­ing from.”

There’s plenty of other yeah-right-no-way mo­ments we could pluck from the Pirates sea­son. Bryan Rey­nolds’ emer­gence. Josh Bell mak­ing runs at records held by Al­bert Pu­jols and Hank Aaron. Pitch­ing turned from the back­bone of this team to a po­ten­tial back­breaker, if they can’t for­tify the ro­ta­tion some.

There has been the bull­pen flip­ping from ter­ri­ble to ter­rific, Rich­ard Ro­dri­guez go­ing from abys­mal early on to a score­less-in­nings streak that now stands at 17⅓. On and on.

For Satur­day, though, let’s shine the spot­light of in­san­ity on Dario Agrazal, who was miles away from the start­ing ro­ta­tion when the sea­son started but has de­liv­ered back-to-back ter­rific out­ings, beat­ing Hous­ton and Mil­wau­kee.

Agrazal has made all of three starts in the ma­jor leagues, and he pitches like he has made 200. He works quick. He pounds the strike zone. The stuff is so-so, but ap­par­ently no­body has told Agrazal. He pitches with guts.

“That’s al­ways how I’ve been,” Agrazal said through team trans­la­tor Mike Gon­za­lez. “My men­tal­ity has al­ways been at­tack mode. I don’t like to put my­self in any sit­u­a­tion where I’m think­ing too much.”

No, just let ev­ery­one else think for you. Smart move.

Think about how Agrazal earned him­self at least an­other start with an in­jury to Steven Brault (left shoul­der strain). And how it’s con­ceiv­able to see a ro­ta­tion with Agrazal in it, should he keep pitch­ing like this.

Against the Brew­ers, Agrazal went six in­nings and al­lowed two earned runs, both on hom­ers. His pitch to Mike Mous­takas was fine, a changeup at the knees. He’ll want the sinker up in the zone that he fed to Gran­dal, but it’s a solo home run. Those don’t lose games.

Of course, grand slams don’t lose games the way the Pirates are hit­ting the ball these days. They scored four in the first, two on New­man’s sin­gle. New­man ho­mered in the fourth, and Star­ling Marte — own­ing the No. 3 spot, an­other de­vel­op­ment that was at least some­what un­pre­dict­able — crushed a two-run tri­ple.

The Pirates added five more in the eighth to turn this into a rout. Of those 13 wins, the (once of­fen­sively chal­lenge) Pirates have scored eight or more runs in seven of those games.

So much for try­ing to pre­dict what will hap­pen, which is why it’s prob­a­bly smart to not even try.

Around the horn

Adam Fra­zier had two hits Satur­day and leads MLB with 15 this month. … Rey­nolds has hit safely in nine of his first 11 games with an at-bat against the Brew­ers. … The Pirates im­proved to 22-6 when Marte has at least one RBI. … The Pirates can im­prove to 5-1-1 in their past seven se­ries with a win Sun­day.

Jason Mackey: jmackey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @JMackeyPG.

 

First Published: July 7, 2019, 2:07 a.m.
Updated: July 7, 2019, 4:06 a.m.

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