Uncharacteristic Miscues End in Tough Loss For Pirates (+)
PITTSBURGH — Over the course of the Pirates seven-game winning streak, and really the start to the season as a whole, the team has played sound baseball.
The team’s starting pitching has been dominant of late. The defense has been mostly sharp and the Pirates had continued to come up with timely hitting.
That sound baseball came to an end on Tuesday against the Los Angeles Dodgers, and so did the Pirates’ winning streak.
The Pirates’ troubles were established quickly. Catcher Austin Hedges was dinged for catcher’s interference in the first inning to give the Dodgers a pair of runners on base. A Miguel Vargas’ bloop double plated both runners and put the Pirates in an early 2-0 hole.
One inning later, Ji Hwan Bae committed a bad error in center field when he dropped a relatively routine flyball. Bae had to run a long way, but was under the ball in time to make the catch. The Dodgers didn’t capitalize on the error, but it forced starter Johan Oviedo to throw a few more pitches.
Rodolfo Castro committed the Pirates’ third error of the game on a Freddie Freeman groundball to shortstop. They play resulted in an infield single and a run for the Dodgers, but both would have happened anyway. Castro’s throw sailed over the head of first baseman Carlos Santana, allowing Freeman to move up to second.
Again, that error didn’t cost the Pirates an extra run, but the fact of the matter is it’s hard to win games when you commit three errors.
“I mean, you know, we didn’t play clean and when you have a team, I mean, we had a 7-2 lead and did not play clean. When you do not play clean and you give a world championship caliber team extra opportunities, they capitalize on them,” manager Derek Shelton said.
Then there was the pitching, what had been the brightest spot for the Pirates during their impressive run.
Oviedo was tagged for four earned runs in 5.1 innings of work, though he probably pitched better than that line indicates.
The real damage came against reliever Colin Holderman, who had been a reliable eighth-inning guy up to this point.
Holderman flirted with danger, both in terms of falling behind guys in counts and in terms of traffic on the bases.
Chris Taylor made him pay. Holderman left a pitch up to Taylor and the Dodgers’ third baseman whacked it over the left field wall to give the Dodgers an 8-7 lead. They went on to win by that score.
“Yeah, I mean, yeah he’s got to get it down and he got behind. It’s a 2-0 pitch and I think he pitched from behind the entire inning, so just really just lack of execution there in the eighth and it ended up costing us,” Shelton said.
The Pirates’ resiliency will be put to the test for the first time in a while on Wednesday night in the second game of this three-game set.
Pittsburgh hasn’t had to shake off a loss since their last defeat to the St. Louis Cardinals on Apr. 16.