MILWAUKEE -- The Pirates were picked up Sunday afternoon by six shutout innings from their bullpen and home runs by Josh Bell and Gregory Polanco to beat the Brewers, 5-1, at Miller Park.
Bell provided the big blow of the afternoon in the fourth, demolishing a 96 mph fastball from Brandon Woodruff:
In case you couldn't see it, that 428-foot home run landed on a previously-mint condition Toyota stationed in right-center field.
Bell had been aiming at that car during batting practice for three years, but that was the first time he actually hit it.
"You’ve got to get it really high," Bell said. "Tough to do in batting practice.”
So if you are on the market for a new Highlander...
"You don’t want that one because it probably has a huge dent in it," Steven Brault joked.
Unless, of course, someone wins the car by hitting it.
"I’m still waiting on the pink slips," Bell said, keeping his fingers crossed.
"[Major-League coach] Glenn Sherlock thinks that car should go to the oldest coach," Derek Shelton said after.
That would mean, by sheer coincidence, that Sherlock, 59, would get it.
"If it went to the oldest looking coach, I would probably win it," Shelton added, pitching his case.
With the way Bell's season had started, he might have been willing to pay to at least pop the dent out for a blast like that. His season has, for the most part, been plagued with strikeouts, chases out of the zone and weak contact.
The heart of the problem seemed to be an inability to time up the fastball, leading to the high volume of whiffs.
Bell is a pretty grounded player, whether he is having a record setting month or the worst one of his career, so he has tried to not stay too far down in the dumps, even amid the strikeouts. Especially since there has been a glimmer of hope lately.
"The last few days, I feel like I’ve been hitting the ball really hard, starting to come out of the slump a little bit," Bell said. "Don’t have exactly everything I want to show for it, but as long as I can stay on the same brain-wavelength of starting on time, being on time for the fastball, I know that’s when the game comes slowly for me."
His home run would be his only hit his four at-bats Sunday, but he also hit two line drives right at Brewers, with all three swings coming against fastballs. He had multi-hit efforts each of the two nights before, including a home run batting right-handed Saturday.
There have been indicators that he has turned a corner started to pop up before this series, too, including chasing out of the zone less and making more consistent contact.
"The timing's better," Shelton explained.
"He’s taking some really good swings," Brault said..
"Everything looks like it’s going a little bit slower for him," Adam Frazier opined.
Making the game feel slower is key to Bell, which is almost impossible to do when you're behind on the fastball.
He has been taking extra reps with the high velocity machine for weeks to try to get his timing back. For the first time, it appears it has.
"It feels like there’s not a redirect to get to fastballs in the zone," Bell said. "It’s just throw the hands at the ball then go from there. It seemed like, at times, you could throw me a ball right down the middle and I was mis-hitting it into the ground. It doesn’t seem like that’s the case right now, so I’m just going to try to stay with where I’m at.”
Bell's importance to the lineup cannot be overstated. For the most part, when he's hot, the whole team's hot. When he's cold, so is the rest of the club. It's probably not fair to put that much pressure on just one hitter, but with the Pirates doing particularly poorly in close games this season, a couple extra hits were sorely needed.
So even if any playoff hopes this year appear to be a lost cause, getting his bat going would be a huge boost.
"It seems like things are turning for me, so I’m definitely excited about it.”
• So that was one of the long home runs from a struggling starter Sunday. Here was another, this time from Polanco:
That snapped an 0-for-18 skid for Polanco, who still cannot have a ball land safely in the field. He now has more home runs (five) than hits of any other variety (four).
• Brault lasted just three innings after having to labor in the third. It was not entirely his fault, though, as Bell flubbed a grounder right at him and Erik Gonzalez and Kevin Newman took too much time to turn a potential inning-ending double play.
The Brewers' only run -- a Keston Hiura bloop single -- came the pitch following the failed double play.
Brault's workload is still be closely monitored, so he was pulled after 68 pitches rather than push him out a fourth inning.
"We didn't help him out," Shelton said. "He could have pitched farther into the game."
Brault allowed one unearned run to score on three hits and a walk, striking out five.
He also took some blame for the high pitch count, saying he had a hard time putting away batters, despite the five punch outs. While he was about to keep his breaking pitches low and fastballs up, they were more center-cut than he would have liked.
"The fastballs they were able to foul off were kind of a little bit maybe not as high as I’d like or maybe not as much in as I’d like," Brault said. "Then the sliders that I was going for for the strikeouts, a lot of them were down but over the plate instead of the down-and-in effect to a righty, the back-foot effect that I’m going for.
"Just a little bit of misses, and that’s how you get the foul balls instead of the swings and misses."
• The bullpen had to cover six innings, the first of which was from Kyle Crick in the fourth.
"I realize it was a little earlier than he normally pitches, but we said yesterday we wanted to make sure he came in, got his feet wet," Shelton said. "He did a nice job."
His velocity was still significantly down from where it was last year, like it was before he was placed on the injured list, sitting at 90-91 mph. He was still able to get three whiffs on six Brewers swings on the afternoon, though.
Most of the heavy lifting was done by Nick Tropeano, who gave 2 2/3 innings of two hit ball.
So far he has given two lengthy outings for the Pirates, and has yet to let a run score.
"He's attacking the zone, and attacking the zone with the fastball, the slider and the split," Shelton said. "I think that is important. That's been the main thing, he's come right after hitters, and he's been effective with his offspeed stuff."
• Things came close to blowing up in the seventh inning though when Geoff Hartlieb faced pinch-hitter Justin Smoak with two outs and the bases juiced. Hartlieb appeared to get an inning-ending foul-tip strikeout, but home plate umpire CB Bucknor did not hear it, causing Shelton and catch JR Murphy to protest.
Smoak was given an extra swing to potentially tie the game, but he ended up whiffing on the following pitch on a slider that fell out of the strike zone.
Shelton said coming back after the call and layoff between pitches is a sign of Hartlieb continuing to take steps in his development.
"Something like that happens, and it’s part of that," Hartlieb said. "Just try to refocus and get back to the next pitch. That’s all it is. Whether it was or it wasn’t, the next pitch is the one that matters. Yeah, there’s a little more motivation to get the next one.”
• Shelton said the turning point in the game came in the fifth inning, when Erik Gonzalez and Frazier worked Woodruff and drew a walk, driving up his pitch count and forcing him out of the game.
Woodruff has given the Pirates trouble this season and had been nearly unbeatable at Miller Park, taking his first home loss since Sept. 27, 2017.
Frazier said the key was to lay off the high fastballs.
"That’s really his bread and butter compared to [his] changeup," Frazier said. "His changeup is a plus pitch. Bring him into the zone; if we can limit the chases, get the pitch count up for him and get him out of there, that was the name of the game today."
• Bryan Reynolds was placed on the paternity list early Sunday, heading home to be with his wife, Blair, as they welcome their first child.
He'll go through safety protocols when he returns.
Will Craig took his spot on the roster, but did not appear in Sunday's game.
• Factoid of the night: Five of the Pirates' 10 wins have come against the Brewers this season. It also guarantees that they will finish with an at least .500 record against the club.
In the 24 seasons since the Brewers joined the National League, this is just the ninth time the Pirates will not finish with a losing record against them. Four of those instances have come in the last five years.