DENVER -- I just watched Joe Musgrove breathe fire.
OK, so maybe no literal flames spouted from his mouth, but there was a roar. And a heavy punch of the glove as he entered the dugout. With his 101st pitch of this Saturday night at Coors Field, Musgrove fanned Yonder Alonso, capping off six full innings and giving him a quality start in the Pirates' 11-4 thumping of the Rockies.
But that roar? That punch? Yeah, that came from a place of passion for Musgrove. He wanted this one.
Listen to it for yourself:
It's not rare to see (and hear) Musgrove express this type of emotion. Jacob Stallings told me Musgrove is "probably the best competitor on our team" after the game, and it's not just moments like that up there but his start as a whole that backs up such a claim. It wasn't lights-out by any means.
Musgrove gave up one run in each of the second, third and fourth innings, including a solo shot to Ryan McMahon in the second (nice snag by the man in the crowd by the way — worth keeping an eye on):
He struck out five hitters while conceding eight hits. None of it pops off the page. But through it all — at this park, no less — Musgrove repeatedly battled out of tough spots to get out and to keep his team well ahead on the score sheet.
"He followed his game plan well," Clint Hurdle was saying. "He didn't give in ... He left men on base tonight, multiple times, with big pitches, with strikeouts or outs to finish innings."
"You want to limit the innings as much as you can," Stallings added. " ... Especially in this park against this lineup. Their top four, five hitters are really, really good hitters."
Charlie Blackmon — one of those "really, really good hitters" — went 2 for 4 on the night. Garrett Hampson turned in two hits of his own. After them, though? No multi-hit games. Trevor Story was held to just one in five at-bats. Nolan Arenado also got one and added a sacrifice fly RBI.
But we're talking musket vs. machine gun in this one when you line up those stats against what the Pirates offense did tonight (more on that in a second). Musgrove's ability to repeatedly get out of jams, to work his way back to safety and to minimize the damage in the process, made the difference as he turned the ball over to Michael Feliz in the seventh.
You know what else made a difference? This little nugget Musgrove casually dropped in his postgame interview:
"I've been working on a new delivery this past week out of the stretch, trying to improve the quality of my pitches and the velo[city] on my pitches out of the stretch," Musgrove said. "I was able to do that today. My velo maintained throughout the game, out of the stretch I was 93, 94, which I haven't been. I've been more 91, 92. So making those adjustments now, things are going to pay off for us a lot next year."
Now, about those electric bats tonight...
• The Pirates offense is playing out of its collective mind here at Coors Field.
Yes, the altitude helps. But with 17 hits tonight — at least one from every position player, including pinch-hitters Pablo Reyes and Erik Gonzalez — the Pirates have logged at least 15 hits in three consecutive games, the first such run for the team since 1936. You have to jog the whole way back to 1922, when they did it in five straight, to find a longer run than three.
To hear Hurdle tell it, though, it's nothing extra-special. It all comes back to fundamentals.
"It's a combination of things, number one," Hurdle began. "It's not like players can take hitting pills and show up. They've been working to be better. It's a combination of getting pitches to hit and not missing them."
And to "get pitches to hit," it certainly helps when:
"Their rotation, that's not the rotation they started the year with," Hurdle said. "They're trying to do the best they can with where they are, with what they got."
Hurdle was polite about it. But the Rockies' starting pitching has been disastrous throughout this series. Poor Tim Melville, who came into the game with a 1-0 record and a 0.75 ERA on 12 innings pitched, took the loss, allowing five runs (four earned) on six hits. His two innings pitched marked the shortest start of his career.
None of that matters if, as Hurdle says, the hitters aren't hitting, though. And from the jump — literally the first pitch — in this one, the Pirates hit:
"Hell yeah," Musgrove said, recalling his reaction when Newman took Melville deep to kick off the night's festivities. "Man, I can't say enough about our offense — this last series, even Philly. When they go out and they give us a lead early, as starting pitchers — we talked about it about a month ago — about trying to get something out of this last six weeks and trying to improve on our games and challenge ourselves to create new sequences and things that we want to work on for next year ...
"Them getting me a huge lead early allows me to go out and work on some of those things and try to execute some pitches, some things that I'm not really all that comfortable with."
Colin Moran got in on the action, going 1 for 3 with a walk and an RBI. That moved his hitting streak to 11 games. Starling Marte took his own streak to 10 games with a ninth-inning RBI single.
Josh Bell hit one to Boulder:
And I mean, you saw that part where I said Gonzalez got a hit, right?
"Hitting can be contagious," Bryan Reynolds, who knows a thing or three about hitting, was telling us at his locker after the game. "To see the guy in front of you put together a good at-bat, get a knock, whatever, it just kind of rubs off on you. You get that confidence going in the box, and it just goes down the line."
All this, and the Pirates still left 11 runners on base. It could've been worse for the Rockies.
Yikes.
• For the seventh straight game, the Pirates bullpen gave up a home run. This time, it was Parker Markel in the eighth, serving one up for Daniel Murphy.
But for the second straight game, it wasn't a total bullpen collapse, either. It was one pitcher giving up a home run. And in this case, scrub the home run away, and Markel performed well. He followed that home run with a groundout and two strikeouts in the eighth then came back in the ninth to put a bow on the win. In all, he went two innings, allowing just that one hit.
In relief of Musgrove, Feliz went one inning with two strikeouts. That's what the Pirates need from this bullpen.
• Reynolds Watch: Jeff McNeil sat out tonight, so he holds at .326. Anthony Rendon (.335) kept rolling with a 2-for-3 evening, while Christian Yelich went 0 for 4 to drop to .328. With his 3-for-6 night, Reynolds climbs to .332 and second place in the chase.
• Back to Musgrove for just a second. I'm consistently impressed by the level of insight he provides and the candid nature with which he'll break down his performances and his approach. Listen to him tell me a little more about that last strikeout. He faced Alonso in a pinch-hitting scenario — and he knew it was coming:
"I get a man on, I get a strikeout with one out to get to two outs and then Alonso comes in, and that's somebody that we had planned on seeing," Musgrove said. "That inning before, we looked at the lineup and knew that spot would be up fourth and if they got to it, they'd probably pinch-hit. So him being the only lefty they had available, we knew it was going to be him off the bench. So we talked about it and had a good game plan, and the execution was there."
Again, those mid-game adjustments were everything for him tonight.
• The Pirates are now batting .242 with the bases loaded, 23 for 95 on the year. They had an opportunity in the second tonight, Osuna to bat, two outs, and Osuna grounded out.
• This guy:
There is an older gentleman using a LITERAL tape recorder in the press box. The sound every time he rewinds to transcribe his quotes is amazing. I gotta respect it. But holy crap, man, there is a BETTER WAY. LOTS OF 'EM! haha #dkps #pirates
— Hunter Alek Homistek (@HunterAHomistek) September 1, 2019
You do your thing, sir, but I do not know how you do it. For me, that was honestly a bit surreal to witness. Small thing, yes. But it made an impression.
• Tonight's paid attendance: 37,293
• Time of game: 3 hours, 26 minutes
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THE INJURIES
• Chris Archer (10-day IL, shoulder)
• Clay Holmes (10-day IL, quadriceps)
• Chris Stratton (10-day IL, right side inflammation)
• Yefry Ramirez (10-day IL, right calf strain)
• Gregory Polanco (60-day IL, shoulder)
• Lonnie Chisenhall (60-day IL, Stormtroopin' accident)
Here's the most recent full report.
THE SCHEDULE
One more here at Coors Field. It'll be Steven Brault against a pitcher to-be-determined on the other side Sunday, first pitch set for 3:10 p.m. Can the Pirates complete the sweep?
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.
