PHOENIX — Joe Musgrove wanted to send a message to the Diamondbacks when the Pirates were only nine outs away from their first winning streak in nearly a month. Josh Harrison was hit by a pitch in the left shoulder earlier in the seventh inning and Austin Meadows barely avoided the same fate.
So, Musgrove, the starting pitcher whose slide against the Cubs 11 days earlier caused both dugouts to clear, reared back and threw a 95-mph fastball that struck Chris Owings in the left ribcage. The Pirates held a five-run lead and Musgrove had been nearly flawless against a first-place lineup.
The act of retaliation came at a steep price.
The Pirates' bullpen allowed a three-run game-tying homer, walked two batters, threw two wild pitches and issued a balk as the Diamondbacks roared back with nine unanswered runs in a 9-5 win Monday night at Chase Field. The meltdown prevented the Pirates from winning back-to-back games for the first time since May 17 and dropped their record to 32-34 on a night where they played some of their best baseball in almost a month.
TAP ABOVE FOR BOXSCORE, STANDINGS, VIDEO"That’s how I was raised to play the game," Musgrove said. "You protect your teammates, especially when a guy like that gets hit high, up and in. … That’s something we don’t want to allow to happen anymore."
The Pirates chased Diamondbacks starter Patrick Corbin in the sixth inning and received contributions throughout the lineup. Starling Marte went 2 for 5 with two RBIs, and Meadows' two-run double sparked a four-run fifth. Jordy Mercer went 2 for 4 with a double, and Josh Bell walked three times.
Then, tensions spiked in the seventh inning when Braden Shipley, a 26-year-old right-hander recalled from Triple-A earlier Monday, threw this 96-mph two-seam fastball:
"Out of the hand it looked like it was coming at my head, so I tried everything I could to get out of the way," Harrison, who is day-to-day with a left shoulder contusion, said. It was his fourth hit-by-pitch this season, and his third since a hit-by-pitch broke a bone in his left hand on April 15. Moments later, Shipley nearly hit Meadows with a 93-mph fastball up and in.
"There’s a lot of throwers, not a lot of pitchers," Harrison said.
Harrison was stranded after two consecutive outs, and Musgrove, who produced seven ground-ball outs through six innings, chose to send a message on the first pitch of the bottom half:
"You know what, you play the game and you protect your teammates," Hurdle said. "It’s been going on for 135 years or so. ... That wasn’t the turning point of the game in my eyes. You can’t control what other people think. There were a ton of pitches to make after that and we weren’t able to make them."
Harrison said: "It felt good. You never want anybody to get hurt, but our livelihood, we only play this game for so long. Regardless what it was, it was low. The guy missed up on me. He missed up on Meadows. It wasn’t intentional, but you throw too hard to be throwing that high at the head."
It began to unravel when Musgrove's 1-0 slider to the next batter, Nick Ahmed, bounced to the backstop for a wild pitch. Ahmed, a .223 hitter this season, drove in Owings with a line drive single to center. Shipley then stepped to the plate and hit a one-hopper to Freese, whose throw to first pulled Bell off the base.
Hurdle chose to pull Musgrove with no outs and runners on first and second, despite the starting pitcher having thrown 63 of his 88 pitches for strikes. Edgar Santana, the most reliable reliever in a struggling bullpen, gave up an RBI single one pitch later. Then, Jake Lamb, the Diamondbacks' third baseman who hit 30 home runs last season, tied the score with one swing:
"Yeah, I missed a couple pitches," Santana said. "That’s the difference."
Musgrove said: "You were willing to go out and hit somebody, you have to be willing to deal with what might come with that, putting the leadoff runner on base, especially late in the game like that. You don’t want to start a rally, but I think the 0-1 slider I threw in the dirt for the wild pitch was what put us in trouble there."
It only got worse. Kyle Crick, the right-handed reliever who threw three wild pitches against the Dodgers five days earlier, and Dovydas Neverauskas, who has a 9.64 ERA in the majors this season, combined to allowed four runs in the eighth.
Crick's wild pitch scored a run, and he allowed a runner to take third on a balk. Neverauskas' wild pitch gave the Diamondbacks another run, and he threw a hanging slider that Daniel Descalso hit off the wall in right-center for a two-run triple. The Pirates' bullpen ERA and WHIP rank 26th and 24th in the majors, respectively. Also, 34 percent of their inherited runners have scored — tied for the third-highest mark in the National League.
Although Musgrove struck out five and allowed only five hits, he had three hit-by-pitches. Brad Boxberger, the Diamondbacks' closer, retaliated in the ninth by hitting Sean Rodriguez with a 90-mph four-seam fastball in the left side. Boxberger, though, got Meadows to ground into a double play, and he struck out Marte to end the game.
The Pirates have now lost 17 of their last 23, and it took only three innings for another game to slip from their grasp.
"When you have a five-run lead going into the seventh you’re pretty confident and when things start falling apart like that, it seems like that’s the way the ball is going right now for us," Musgrove said. "We’re just not really winning the games we should win."
1. Musgrove pitches 'extremely well' again.
Each of Musgrove's five pitches were effective against the Diamondbacks. The 25-year-old right-hander did not allow an extra-base hit, and he used his three fastballs — a sinker, cutter and four-seamer — to force quick outs. He needed only 26 pitches to get through three innings.
The Diamondbacks had back-to-back singles to lead off the second; however, Musgrove needed only five pitches to get three consecutive outs. He got 19 called strikes, including seven from his cutter, and the Diamondbacks had an average exit velocity of only 82.7 mph.
"He pitched extremely well throughout the game," Hurdle said afterwards.
Musgrove's changeup produced six swinging strikes, and he used two different slider grips, one of which he learned from Chad Kuhl. The two grips produced two different velocities, and one variation of the slider had more depth. He used the latter to strike out Paul Goldschmidt in the first inning.
Despite the ugly seventh inning, Musgrove has a 2.16 ERA, 1.12 WHIP and 23 strikeouts to five walks in four major-league starts. He's proven worthy of a spot in the rotation and, next to Jameson Taillon, has shown the most promise on the staff. And he was willing to pitch himself out of the seventh inning.
"I felt sharp still," Musgrove said. "I felt like I was still strong. I felt like I was executing pitches, but Santana has been lights out for us. I was comfortable handing the ball over to him, but it just didn’t go our way tonight."
2. Hurdle made the right call.
It's fair to question Hurdle for removing Musgrove with two on in the seventh. After all, the Pirates' bullpen has been a mess this season, and Musgrove had proven capable of getting a quick ground-ball out. He has one of the highest ground-ball rates on the staff, and he only had to pitch out of the stretch twice all night.
But Musgrove's cutter seemed to have lost its bite, and he needed 23 pitches to get through the previous inning. Santana has the highest ground-ball rate among Pirates relievers, and left-handers were batting only .157 against him. Santana got a grounder from Daniel Descalso, a lefty, but it found outfield grass.
Santana then struck out Goldschmidt before falling behind 2-0 to Lamb, a left-hander. He threw a sinker right down the middle that resulted in a home run.
"At that point in time, he had just gone through a push inning in the sixth," Hurdle said of his decision to lift Musgrove. It was only the third home run Santana had allowed this season. The problem, though, is Hurdle doesn't have anyone to turn to beyond Santana.
Michael Feliz can no longer be trusted with high-leverage innings. Felipe Vazquez has struggled because teams have finally noticed he's been tipping his pitches for the past 12 months. Neither Steven Brault nor Tyler Glasnow are being used in such situations. So, Hurdle had to turn to Crick even if Santana limited the damage to one or two runs.
And Crick was a disaster.
"A big five and a big four is tough to handle that late in the game," Hurdle said.
3. Bell showing more patience in new spot.
Pitchers haven't been giving Bell much to hit lately. Why would they? He swung at too many pitches out of the zone early this season, and that lack of discipline finally caught up to him. Mired in a three-week-long slump, Bell was moved out of the cleanup spot over the weekend, as Hurdle wanted the 25-year-old first baseman to start seeing more pitches both at the plate and in the dugout.
Bell, who batted seventh against the Diamondbacks, walked three times and scored in the fifth on Meadows' double. Bell has walked seven times over his past three games. It took him 24 games to total seven walks prior to that. Although he's 2 for 24 this month, the walks bode well. Bell averaged more than five pitches in his four plate appearances Monday night, drawing four-, five- and six-pitch walks.
His timing is still off, though.
In the sixth inning, Bell whiffed at an 89-mph fastball thrown high and over the middle of the plate. Also, he fouled off a four-seamer over the middle of the plate in the second inning.