Jameson Taillon served up a three-run home run, and the Pirates blew a big lead.
Felipe Rivero served up a three-run home run, and the Pirates blew the game.
And yet, inconceivable as this might come across, neither had all that much to do with what wound up an 11-5 annihilation at the hands of the Yankees on this chilly and somewhat chilling Saturday night at PNC Park.
"The bottom line," as Josh Harrison was telling me afterward, "is that we have to be better defensively."
A whole lot better. Unless, of course, anyone can envision a defensively deficient team succeeding while otherwise built on a young rotation, a wobbly bullpen, a decent if unspectacular everyday eight and a now, thanks to Jung Ho Kang and Starling Marte, a thoroughly battered bench.
Someone's going to have to catch the ball. And throw it. And the Pirates, as the data will show, aren't good at these things, having committed 16 official errors through this 7-10 start and ranking in Major League Baseball's bottom four in that category, as well as fielding percentage and defensive efficiency rating.
What's more, they haven't been good at these things for a while, rewinding back to the 98-win season of 2015, then the infamous Bridge Year of 2016 to what's now the other end of that bridge:
The 98-win team could pitch. The Bridge Year team could hit even better than its predecessor, thanks largely to a prodigious bench. But this group's got nowhere to hide. It's going to get hammered when bad defense happens, on and off the field, as Saturday painfully painted on both fronts.
Taillon faced two New York batters above the minimum through five and held a 3-0 lead. He wasn't quite as sharp as that sounds, walking a couple and running up a handful of three-ball counts. But you'll take that line from your young starter against one of the American League's more dynamic lineups.
He did slip up in the sixth, allowing an infield single to tick off his glove, then a terribly timed walk before leaving a meaty fastball up and over for Starlin Castro to feast:
Taillon's description of the sequence was biting:
