The Pirates’ losses feel the same this season.
After Thursday night’s 7-2 loss in their series opener against the Milwaukee Brewers, the Pirates are now 29-51. Forty-four of those 51 losses have come with the Pirates scoring three runs or fewer.
As that stat would imply, their offense has been one of the worst in baseball this season. Their team OPS entering Thursday was .650. That’s 22 points lower than the next-worst team OPS, which belongs to the New York Mets and Miami Marlins (tied at .672). They’d also scored the second-fewest runs among all MLB teams heading into Thursday’s game, only outpacing the Mets, though it should be noted that Pittsburgh has played three more games than New York.
Plain and simple, there have been a lot of ugly, offensively forgettable games for the Pirates this season. Thursday was another one of them.
Against Brewers right-hander Corbin Burnes, who, to be fair, has had a stellar season, the Pirates’ only offensive production came on a solo home run from right fielder Ben Gamel in the fifth inning. At that time, it cut the Brewers’ lead to 2-1. On this night, though, with the way the Pirates’ bats were going, that small lead proved insurmountable.
“Well, part of that is the pitching we've faced — because we've faced good pitching — but there is frustration, because you're working hard and we're not seeing it translate right now,” manager Derek Shelton said. “We've got to keep working hard and try and get better to get out of this lull.”
And when the Brewers added two more runs in the sixth inning, the resulting three-run lead felt like a Mount Everest. In the end, the Pirates tallied six hits, three of them singles.
With that, the Pirates’ pitching didn’t stand much of a chance to help the Pirates to a win. Right-hander Wil Crowe gave a solid, albeit rocky effort. The second inning was especially rough, as he walked Tyrone Taylor, then allowed an RBI triple to Jace Peterson. Two batters later, Brewers outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr., scored Peterson with an RBI double of his own.
The hard contact seemed to portend an ugly outing, but Crowe did battle and hang in there, answering back with a 1-2-3 inning in the third. He exited the game after 4 2/3 innings, allowing four hits, two runs and three walks, all while striking out six Brewers.
“Those guys are swinging it pretty good right now, and their maps and our game plan was to attack them with the fastball when we can, but use offspeed to get the weak contact, the low damage,” Crowe said. “Just trying to keep the ball in the yard and keep the ball in the playing field. The slider and the changeup today were good, and just going after the guys with our gameplan we were preparing for.”
The ugliest pitching performance came from right-handed reliever Clay Holmes, who took over on the mound to start the sixth inning. He walked the first two batters he faced, committed a balk to move them up to second and third, then gave up a one-run single and another walk to load the bases. He left after that without recording an out. Right-hander Chris Stratton replaced him and gave up a sacrifice fly to permit one more run, but otherwise limited the damage completely.
Closer Richard Rodriguez got beat up in the ninth, too, allowing four hits and three runs to put the game completely out of hand.
Obviously, the Pirates would have felt better about their chances if Holmes had been more solid or if Crowe had been flawless. It is also obvious, though, that pitching is not the Pirates’ problem right now.
Even the top of their order — the trio of second baseman Adam Frazier, third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes and center fielder Bryan Reynolds, who have been so solid for most of the season — struggled a bit, combining to go 2-for-12 with a Frazier single and a Hayes double.
Those are three of the Pirates’ five hitters who were hitting above .230 entering the game. The other two are infielders Colin Moran and Erik Gonzalez. Moran hit the injured list with a small fracture in his wrist before Thursday’s game, and Gonzalez hurt himself in the seventh inning while legging out an infield single.
Which is all to say that things are dire for the Pirates. Most nights, if Frazier, Hayes and Reynolds aren’t producing, there are very few other places to turn for reliable production. That was true again Thursday, as they were outmanned by the Brewers for their fourth-straight loss.
Mike Persak: mpersak@post-gazette.com and Twitter @MikeDPersak
First Published: July 2, 2021, 2:53 a.m.