CINCINNATI -- Remember the narrative about the Pirates being the best bottom-feeder in baseball, going 17-5 against sub-.500 teams?
Well, funny thing happened ...
Last weekend saw the Pirates drop three of four at home to the woeful Padres. Tuesday, however, brought another low.
The Pirates dropped their fourth straight, losing, 7-2, to the Reds, the worst team in the National League, at Great American Ball Park. Of course, this is not the first four-game skid that the Pirates have suffered this season. But it is perhaps their most troubling.
Unlike previous skids against the contending Phillies and Nationals, these were the Padres and now the Reds. For a team that has been one of the biggest surprises in baseball to date, these are the opponents the Pirates are supposed to beat up on — really have to beat up on — if they are to stay in contention in the tight NL Central which is separated by just three games first place through fourth.
TAP ABOVE FOR BOXSCORE, STANDINGS, VIDEO"We've won a few in a row, we've lost a few in a row," said Clint Hurdle. "We fight. We had the tying run up again in this game. For me, it’s all about tomorrow's game. We'll honestly self-evaluate this game and move on."
Well, if we're going to honestly evaluate Tuesday's game, we'd have to say it was lost in the first inning after a thunderstorm swept through Great American Ball Park, forcing a one-hour and five-minute rain delay.
After Matt Harvey worked his way out of a one-out, bases-loaded jam, striking out Colin Moran for the final out, Scooter Gennett and the Reds made the Pirates pay dearly.
With two outs in the home half of the first, Gennett lifted a Jameson Taillon pitch into right field that looked to be an inning-ending fly out. And then this happened ...
Of course, if you've watched the Pirates you'd know that any ball hit Gregory Polanco's way has been an adventure.
"I don’t know, I don’t know what happened," said Taillon, who is still looking for his first win since April 8. "I thought I made a good pitch there. When it was off the bat I thought that it had zero chance of falling. When it did, I was caught off guard there. Don’t know how it happened. I made my pitch there and it is what it is."
Polanco looked slow to break to the ball but then took a circuitous route to it before it dropped in for an easy double for Gennett. Officially, there was no error on the play but it's a play that had to be made.
"I lost it (in the lights)," Polanco said. "I tried to do my best."
Instead of being out of the inning, one batter later, Eugenio Suarez doubled off Taillon, scoring Gennett and Tucker Barnhart.
Taillon settled down over the next three innings and, truth be told, probably deserved a better fate. He struck out eight over six innings and had decent command of his pitches. He threw 20 of 27 first-pitch strikes and retired nine batters on three pitches or less. But there was one pitch he'd clearly like back.
With one out in the fifth, Taillon gave up a single to Jose Peraza and a double to Barnhart to put runners at second and third. With Joey Votto coming up to the plate, Hurdle gave a free pass to, arguably, the best pure hitter in the game. Instead he chose to pitch to Gennett. Sound strategy, right?
"You've got a guy (Gennett) who’s grounded into six double plays hitting behind (Votto) and only has nine walks on the season," Hurdle explained. "So you’ve got a swinger. So you’re looking for a double play or a swing and miss."
Not this, obviously:
Gennett deposited Taillon's 86-mph off-speed pitch 411 feet (100.3-mph exit velocity) deep into the right field seats to make it 6-1. Hurdle took responsibility for the decision, but Taillon said it was a failure of execution.
"We thought first pitch swing, we'll go changeup, put him on the ground," he said. "And that's just where it comes down to execution."
Either way, it was a four-run swing that the Pirates couldn't overcome. One has to wonder if Tuesday's game doesn't have a different outcome if Polanco simply gets his team out of the first inning unscathed.
One also has to wonder how much faith the Pirates have in Polanco defensively. The miss on Gennett's first-inning double was one of two plays where the right fielder looked shaky. In the fifth inning, he nearly collided with Josh Harrison on a fly ball to shallow right field. Polanco caught the ball but also didn't appear to have called off his second baseman.
Harvey pitched six innings, giving up one run on three hits — including a neck high fastball that Colin Moran homered off of in the fourth — to earn his first win with the Reds. The former Mets star was acquired May 8 after playing parts of six seasons in New York.
1. The Pirates do have other outfield options.
Austin Meadows continues to make his case to stay in the majors, even when Starling Marte returns from his oblique injury.
We should know more about Marte's status later Wednesday, but Meadows continues to shine in center field and at the plate. The Pirates' top non-pitching prospect hit his second major-league home run in as many games Tuesday.
In the seventh inning, Amir Garrett hung a one-out slider that Meadows hit into the right field seats. Meadows said he'd seen the same pitch from Garrett while playing in AAA Indianapolis and was expecting it.
"I knew he had that slider and I’d be looking at it at some point," the 23-year-old said. "Saw it and was able to react to it."
It was Meadows' first homer off a lefty and equaled his HR total in 32 minor-league games this season. Why the power surge now? He says he's able to read the spin of the ball much better under the bright lights of major-league stadiums. Meadows is now hitting .400 — 6-for-15 — after going 1-for-4 on Tuesday.
It also marked the first road game for Meadows and the first without family on hand after making his MLB debut last Friday. He said he's "settling down and settling in" at the highest level.
"For me it's just going out there and being aggressive," he told me. "Not taking pitches that I can hit. Being in my zone, being selectively aggressive at the plate has been the biggest key for me."
2. Musgrove's on track.
After spending the past four weeks in the minors for an extended rehab stint, Joe Musgrove says he's poorer for the experience. Well, sort of.
Turns out he'd been treating his young teammates to post-game spreads of steaks, sushi and ice cream. That stuff adds up, you know. Actually, the 2017 World Series champ says he was more than happy to splurge. He says he was merely paying it forward after seeing former Pirate Charlie Morton do the same last season while with Houston.
When Musgrove takes the mound Friday against the Cardinals at PNC Park in his Pirates debut, it'll be his first major-league action since Game 6 of last year's World Series when he helped the Astros to the franchise's first title. Before that happens, the 25-year-old will throw a final bullpen session tomorrow at Great American Ball Park.
Though he was roughed up in his last rehab outing with Triple-A Indianapolis, allowing six runs on 10 hits in five innings, he reports he's good to go.
"Really excited," he said. "A little anxiousness and some butterflies starting to kick in. A lot of sitting down, a lot of patience, but I'm finally ready to go."
Since coming to the Pirates, the 6-foot-5 right-hander says he felt like he'd only been "collecting a check" after going out with a shoulder injury in spring training. Musgrove was the centerpiece in the Gerrit Cole trade that also saw the Pirates land Colin Moran and Michael Feliz.
Musgrove says he's had "a blast" watching his new team have success, thanks in part to Moran and Feliz.
"We're able to share some of our experience and share what we felt made that team really good," he said. "We know this is a unique team. It's not the same people or the same environment we had there, but we're here with open minds and willing to share what we know," Musgrove said.
Obviously, he's well aware of what Cole has done this season in Houston, but he told me that it doesn't place any undue pressure on him:
"I don't really let that play into what I'm doing," he said. "I'm going to do me and control myself. I've been preparing to be the best that I can and when I go out there on Friday I'll let the chips falls where they may."
3. And when Musgrove does come back ...
... the Pirates will have to make a corresponding roster move to make way for their prized acquisition.
The odd-man out appears all but certain to be reliever George Kontos, who last week was demoted from his spot as the eighth inning set-up man.
In a seventh-inning role in relief of Taillon on Tuesday night, Kontos did little to help his case to remain on the big-league roster.
The first batter he faced, Peraza, he hit with a pitch. Peraza then swiped second base easily. Barnhart followed with a single into left center field advancing Peraza to third. To his credit, Kontos was able to get the next three outs — including two strikeouts, one with Votto looking — but not before Gennett scored Peraza on a sac fly, for his sixth and final RBI of the game.