KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Trevor Williams' night started by allowing a lead off home run and did not get much better from there, continuing to fail to execute pitches in a 7-4 loss to the Royals at Kauffman Stadium Saturday.
Williams allowed six earned runs on 10 hits and three walks over five innings pitched. It was his fourth straight start where he allowed at least five runs, the longest active streak in the majors.
He also allowed a pair of home runs, his 11th and 12th of the season. No National League pitcher has served up more.
Or to look at it more concisely, his 6.35 ERA is the highest out of all 45 pitchers with enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. That more or less tells the whole story.
"I have to stop giving up homers. It’s really that simple," Williams said about his struggles. "It just compounds. You give up a base hit, whether it’s hit hard or hit soft, and it compounds. Those are the ones that hurt you.
"Today it was a lack of execution. The starts prior, there were a lot of positives from the last start. This start, we’re going to have to dissect it and look for the positives."
While his issues on the mound are more pertinent, Williams also didn't do any favors for himself in the field Saturday.
With runners on the corners and one out, Alex Gordon hit a tapper out in front of the plate, a bit to WIlliams' right. He appeared to have Salvador Perez out at the plate, but he opted to trip to flip it from his glove on a backhand to Jacob Stallings rather than barehand it.
The feed would end up going over his catcher's head:
"When we practice that play, it’s never a backhand glove flip," Williams said. "It’s one of those where you either have to get around it more or I just have to barehand it. It’s never a backhanded glove flip. And I thought he was closer to the plate than he actually was out of my periphery."
That allowed not only Perez to score and the runners to move up another base, but it also enabled another run to score late in the inning on a sacrifice fly.
"I think he just tried do too much there, it ended up getting away and the game kind of got away from us," Derek Shelton said.
To Shelton's point, the Pirates would fall behind 7-3 that inning and barely threatened to make it a game again from that point.
Coming off a disappointing 2019 campaign, Williams started the season showing promise of regaining that 2018 form, but has ultimately failed to. He and pitching coach Oscar Marin have been searching for mechanical solutions, which has led to him even pitching exclusively out of the stretch over these last two starts. So far, it hasn't helped his results.
With 15 calendar days remaining in the season, Williams is theoretically in line to make three more starts this season. Shelton reaffirmed Saturday that they will be starts, and that he isn't moving into the bullpen.
The best thing that could happen for him and the Pirates in those three starts is he finds something that clicks that can carry over into 2021.
"I’ve got a few starts left," Williams said. "I’m looking forward to finishing on a high note. I’m looking forward to coming to the field tomorrow and picking apart this start and seeing what positives we can run with.”
• The big news of the day happened before the Pirates arrived at Kauffman Stadium, when there was a live shooter at Arrowhead Stadium, which is adjacent at the ballpark. The Pirates' stayed in their hotels until about 4:15 and arrived at the ballpark at 4:40.
The suspect was taken into custody at 6:20. No shots were fired in his apprehension.
First pitch was delayed until 6:35 p.m. CT rather than the original 6:05 p.m., and the Pirates were unable to take on-field batting practice beforehand. That will mean they will go four straight days without taking BP on the field. Thursday was an off-day, Friday's didn't happen because of the weather and Sunday is a day game, meaning they will not have time beforehand.
Shelton said the incident and delay "had no effect on the game tonight."
• No batting practice didn't have any effect on Josh Bell, though. He was planning on passing on taking some anyway, opting to instead have 20-30 swings against soft toss pitching.
So that's two straight days Bell hasn't taken on-field BP, and two straight days he's done this:
That was part of a 2-for-4 night for Bell, who has been heating as of late.
"I might’ve taken batting practice for the last time this year,” Bell joked.
Now it's fair to be skeptical if Bell is "back" since he has yet to string more than a couple good games together in 2020, but he has earned this hits. All five this series have been squared, and he is doing it by finally catching up to fastballs.
So maybe this is finally the breakout?
"Really positive signs," Shelton said. "This is probably the most pleased I personally have been with how he's swinging the bat."
• The Pirates hit three home runs in the first three innings, one each from Bell, Bryan Reynolds and Adam Frazier, but fell silent from there.
"Gave ourselves a good opportunity to be in the game, and just didn't do much after that," Shelton said.
The only other run was manufactured by Erik Gonzalez in the eighth when he took advantage of a napping outfielder to stretch a single into a double, followed it by stealing third and then scored on a Frazier ground out.
• Kyle Crick pitched 2/3 of an inning Saturday, walking two and allowing two hits and a run.
His fastball velocity was sitting around 91 mph, significantly lower than the 95-96 mph he averaged the past two seasons.
It seems very unlikely that it will reach that point again after missing most of the season with a right shoulder injury, so Shelton said the club is not going to be worried about his fastball velocity for the rest of the year.
"I think it’s something that’s going to tick up as we get into the offseason and he gets into next spring training," Shelton said.
• Another day, another Ke'Bryan Hayes highlight.
Like Friday, this play came in the first inning. Unlike Friday, where he charged in on a drag bunt attempt, this time he had to backpedal to grab a sinking Maikel Franco pop foul:
"Key made that play look easy," Shelton said. "He just continues to do positive things. He continues to not let his heartbeat get too fast. A really nice play."
• Stepping aside from the game for a moment, Mark Newman, one of the key members of the Yankees' front office during its dynasty in the 90s, died Saturday morning.
Newman was the one who gave Shelton his first shot as a minor-league coach. Shelton said that other than his father, Newman had the "greatest influence in my professional life."
"There’s a couple things that stuck with me with Mark," Shelton said before the game. "He never let me be complacent. When I thought I was doing a good job, he challenged me to do something else. It wasn’t that he wasn’t proud of me or he wasn’t happy with me. It was like, ‘OK, you’ve got this. Here’s the next step.’ When I was working in instructional league, he wouldn’t let me work with the catchers. He made me work with the outfielders. He made me work with the infielders. Because he knew I was going to manage, and he knew I was going to have to watch the whole game. There was always a process to what he did to make me better. I appreciate that to the nth degree.
"... People like to throw around ‘coaching coaches.’ This guy was the master of coaching coaches. He was the best ever at it. There’ll never be anybody like him because of the way he challenged people. I’m very fortunate that he was a part of my life.”
• Factoid of the night: Bell's home run was his 17th against an interleague opponent, tying him with Pedro Alvarez, Brian Giles and Kevin Young for the third most in franchise history. The two ahead of him are Starling Marte (18) and Andrew McCutchen (20).