Point two-one-six.
That's the Pirates' winning percentage since the All-Star Break. The club is 8-29 since those happy, long-gone days of sitting two-and-a-half games out of first place in the NL Central. After their 11-1 drubbing Wednesday evening, they've now lost two of three to these Nationals in this four-game series at PNC Park.
But wait for it. Those two losses have come by a combined score of 24-1.
That's real.
And so is this:
That's Joe Musgrove up there — fresh off a seven-and-one-third-inning, nine-strikeout, two-earned-run performance in his previous start, mind you — giving up a half-dozen to the Nationals in the top of the third. Technically, Musgrove was charged with only five earned runs here due to an error, which negated one of them.
But the error was on Musgrove so...
"I didn't really have great stuff tonight, from the bullpen all the way out to the fifth inning," Musgrove was telling us at his locker after the game. "... But I was battling, man. The [Adam Eaton] double, that was a good pitch. The [Anthony Rendon] two-RBI, I thought it was a good pitch. Then I made some poor pitches. The homer was, you know, the most painful pitch of the night. It's one of those nights where I didn't have my stuff and I was battling the best I could."
Yeah, it wasn't his night. In any capacity. That error, an errant throw to second base that sailed into the outfield, was his second of two. The first was an attempted pickoff he threw too low for Josh Bell. That one skipped far away, as well.
I asked him if knowing he had "bad stuff" today caused him to over-compensate and eventually concede that bundle of runs in the third:
"I've been in that spot before and I have over-compensated and it's done me no good," Musgrove was telling me. "So I was trying to keep myself calm ... You can't go out there and do the same thing over and over and hope for good results. You gotta try to make adjustments and make quick fixes. I was a little bit caught up in trying to find a fix that kind of allowed me to get to that extension side and execute pitches better. I wasn't able to really do it very well."
But, man, tonight? Even Musgrove's "good pitches" got smacked around the field. On paper, his first two innings look clean, but the Nationals still smashed balls to the warning track and right up against the wall. Add in the fact that it's another loss for a team that can do nothing else right now, and...
"Yeah, it sucks," Musgrove added.
Pretty much.
There's not a lot more to say when a team is 52-74 and when everyone in town is calling for heads to roll. This Pirates team is in one of the worst stretches in its 133-year history. I mean, re-read that sentence. That's happening. Right now.
Amazingly, manager Clint Hurdle kept his cool after the game when asked if he felt his job was on the line.
"My focus is on doing my job, not if my job's in jeopardy," Hurdle began. "It never has been since I've had an opportunity to be a manager. Those are decisions that other people make. I'm 62 years old, man. I'm going to manage as long as people will have me manage. When they won't have me manage, I'll go home.
"So my job is to do everything I can to get this club to play better baseball — to finish games, to execute better."
"I know a lot of pressure goes back on him when we're not doing our job, and that's not necessarily fair to him," Musgrove added in support of his manager. "But we just gotta play better as a team."
How about we start with .216 though, eh?
A number that low is more than just some bad luck.
• Go down to the comments and convince me Steven Brault isn't this team's best starting pitcher. No, seriously. I'll be waiting.
• The nearly spotless line on the other side from Patrick Corbin: eight innings pitched, three hits, four strikeouts, two walks. He threw 93 pitches, 63 for strikes.
I asked Hurdle what Corbin was doing that gave his guys so much trouble tonight:
"It's the first guy I've seen in some time, I think the lowest-throttled pitch he threw was that slow curveball at 63 [MPH] and his fastball played at 93," Hurdle said. "He covered 30 miles an hour. I haven't seen that in a long time ... He just throttled us. On and off. Forward and back. Enough fastballs up. Just a really solid mix of pitches.
"We didn't have any answer."
Truer words...
• Even when it looked like the Pirates might have something to celebrate — like a home run in the fourth — this happened:
I'd say "not their night," but let's be honest: Not their season. Rotten luck is all.
• One bright spot: Bryan Reynolds went 2 for 4 tonight, and he now sits at .325 on the year, fourth in the NL. His second hit, a single in the ninth inning, set up the Pirates' one run, this RBI double from Josh Bell:
• That's the 23rd time the Pirates allowed double-digit runs this year. They've played 126 games, so that means once every five-and-a-half games, you can count on the opponent going for 10-plus.
Freaking. Yikes.
• OK, two bright spots. Dario Agrazal, fresh off a recall from Class AAA Indianapolis earlier in the day, pitched two shutout innings in relief of Musgrove.
"It was his day he was scheduled to pitch in Triple-A," Hurdle said. "So rather than just pass him over and wait to pick up [Chris Archer's] spot, that many days down doesn't make sense ... So (we decided) to get him a couple innings, to get him involved in some competition. I thought he throttled the ball, pitched very well today in the two innings he was out there ... and that should put him in line to make that start."
• Brault will face Max Scherzer tomorrow in the series finale — a battle of aces, if you will.
Pegged as a bullpen arm for 2019 before injuries thrust him into the starting rotation, Brault has to think it's pretty cool to go head-to-head with guys of that caliber right? I asked him after the game:
• Musgrove's been quick to credit Jacob Stallings when things go right for him, so that got me wondering ... How does Stallings help Musgrove through a rough outing like today's? Musgrove broke it down:
• All of them. Then re-hire them. Then fire them again.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THE INJURIES
• Gregory Polanco (10-day IL, shoulder)
• Francisco Cervelli (60-day IL, concussion)
• Lonnie Chisenhall (60-day IL, now accepting Apple Pay)
Here's the most recent full report.
THE SCHEDULE
The Pirates return tomorrow at 7:05 p.m. for the series finale against the Nationals. Matt Sunday and newly acquired Alex Stumpf will have that one.
THE COVERAGE
All our baseball content, including Mound Visit by Jason Rollison, Indy Watch by Matt Welch, and Altoona Watch by Jarrod Prugar, can be found on our Pirates page.