Time to talk Gold Glove for Stallings

The Pirates made it two walkoff wins at PNC Park in a row Tuesday night, coming back to beat the White Sox, 5-4, on a Kevin Newman dribbler.

While they were able to get the hits they needed late, most of the deficit they had to overcome was self-inflicted. For a team that leads the majors with 38 errors made, that isn’t too far out of the ordinary.

In the eighth, Gregory Polanco misplayed a ball off the wall, allowing Jose Abreu to take another base and score.

In the fifth, the White Sox got on the board when Newman could not handle a Yoan Moncada one-hopper. Yasmani Grandal capitalized in the next at-bat, launching a two-out, two run homer off Dovydas Neverauskas.

But through the miscues, it was also a defensive play in the fifth inning that saved the game. And who better to do it than the player who has consistently been the team’s best glove, Jacob Stallings?

With one out in the inning, Nick Madrigal ran through his third base coach’s stop sign to try to score the first run of the game on a Tim Anderson bloop to center.

Bryan Reynolds’ throw was strong but a bit off line, towards the first base side. Stallings kept his plant foot in the left-handed batter’s box, but had to reach to corral it.

He was able to field it cleanly. That was the easy part. Now he had to figure out where to go with it.

“I really didn't have any idea where the runner was,” Stallings said afterwards, chuckling. “… I just dove towards the plate where I thought the play was.”

Stallings guessed right, nabbing Madrigal right before he touched home. The White Sox challenged, but after a one minute and 22 second review, the call stood.

A former catcher himself, Derek Shelton knew how tough a play that was.

“You’ve got to be aggressive with the tag, and he was,” Shelton said. “It was an outstanding play on his part.”

Stallings has made the outstanding plays this year, as well as the little ones. The organization’s new leadership put their faith in Stallings by naming him the starter this offseason, even though he often got less than half the playing time in his rise to the majors. His glove was the main reason why.

While his .294 batting average and .798 on-base plus slugging have been much more than just about anybody expected from him on offense, most of his value has come from his work in the field. 

He is currently tied for the most defensive runs saved among catchers with four. He’s thrown out six potential base stealers (and 35% in total, well above the league's 24%) and picked off a pair, too. Going by Baseball Reference's calculations, the defensive WAR leader for catchers is...take a guess.

Whether you want to grade him by blocking, framing or any other way you want to evaluate a catcher, Stallings is among the league’s best, if not the best.

So are we approaching the point where maybe his defense deserves recognition on a grander scale?

“When you start to talk about Gold Gloves and handing them out, if he’s not at the top of the list, I think people are missing it,” Shelton said recently. “I don’t think anybody’s caught better. I don’t think anybody’s blocked better. I would be hard-pressed if anybody’s thrown the ball better.”

You can add "applying tags" to that last now, too.

That was the second time this year a Pirates coach had seriously mentioned “Stallings” and “gold glove” in the same sentence. The first was back during spring training 1.0, when bullpen catcher Jordan Comadena told me that Stallings could be in the discussion if he got a full season’s workload.

He might have been biased, seeing how and Stallings helped develop a weighted ball program that helped Stallings become one of the best framers in baseball, but here we are, technically two-thirds the way through this season, and it looks like he could be right. 

And if he is, that tag should play on the highlight reel while they announce the award.

• It won't show up on any scoresheet, but Stallings was also instrumental for getting Joe Musgrove on track Tuesday.

Musgrove, making his second start since coming off the injured list, said he did not have his best stuff in the first inning Tuesday. 

Actually, he "couldn't have felt much worse" in that first. He was searching for a feeling in any of his pitches, and he just couldn't find it. So he leaned on his catcher.

"I was kind of just following Stalls’ lead there," Musgrove said.

Musgrove was able to get out of the inning unscathed, and wound up finding his stuff and settling in as the start progressed, giving four scoreless frames. But in Stallings' opinion, that first inning was the most important.

"I really think him putting up a zero in that first inning was obviously not the only reason we won the game, but it was a huge, probably overlooked factor in the game," Stallings said.

• Newman has to be running out of ways to get walkoffs, right? 

Tuesday was the sixth time he ended a ball game. This time, he was presented the best situation he could have had: Bases loaded, nobody out, one run wins it.

“It’s a good spot to be in with a tie ballgame,” Newman said. “Just went up there and tried to make good, solid contact. That’s not how it went.”

Instead, Newman hit a slow roller in front of the mound, but Grandal flubbed the feed from pitcher Jimmy Cordero and Jason Martin scored.

So yeah, a walkoff fielder's choice error. 

"We got the win, so that's all that matters," Newman said, grinning.

The Pirates battled back from being down 3-0 and 4-2, responding in the fifth and eighth innings with a pair of runs.

The first two were sparked by Ke'Bryan Hayes, who launched a two-out triple and then scored on an infield hit from Newman. In the eighth, Newman and Stallings opened the frame with back-to-back doubles, and Erik Gonzalez bounced a ball over the head of the drawn-in shortstop Anderson to plate pinch-runner Cole Tucker from third.

“They don’t quit,” Shelton said. “We started 4-17. They didn’t quit at all during that. They continue to play hard. They continue to put themselves in situations where we give ourselves an opportunity, and they finished the game. It was nice to see.”

• Musgrove was on a 65-pitch limit in his second start back, so he was removed in the fourth because he was at his pitch limit, not because he was drilled by a 99 mph Moncada line drive off his left calf in the third.

After the game, Musgrove said his calf feels fine. But during?

"By the time I got up to the clubhouse, I couldn’t really put much weight, couldn’t walk that much on it. I feel a lot better now. Nothing serious. Just hits you in the muscle, everything tightens up and it makes it tough to move. I’m good now."

• The bullpen continues to turn in good work. After the Neverauskas inning, Kyle Crick gave a scoreless sixth and Chris Stratton covered the next two innings, allowing just the one unearned run. Richard Rodriguez tossed a scoreless ninth.

All four Pirates relievers Tuesday each struck out two batters.

• Adam Frazier and Gonzalez both went 1-for-4 with a single, extending their hitting streaks to 11 and nine games, respectively.

The streak is especially welcome for Frazier, who started the season in an elongated slump.

"I think he’s starting to shorten up with his swing," Shelton said about Frazier during this stretch. "I think, you guys saw last year to put the barrel of the bat on the ball. At times he’d gotten a little long and off the ball... Mechanically, I think it looks like he’s getting into his slot better, and when he gets into his slot better, then he’s able to take that short stroke."

• Factoid of the night: Reynolds leads the National League with five outfield assists. He had four assists in 2019.