CINCINNATI -- The Pirates’ losing streak reached seven games Tuesday night at Great American Ball Park, dropping a 4-1 decision to the Reds.
Joe Musgrove took the loss and was removed after five innings as he continues to be ramped back up after his stint on the injured list. Blake Cederlind, who was activated off the taxi squad before Tuesday’s game, came on in relief in the sixth inning.
It probably was for the best that he was the first one out. He could barely sit down watching the game.
“I just kept moving around,” Cederlind said. “Little nervous. And then, the phone rang, got the call. Yeah, and then I just got excited.”
When he got in the game, he was met by Jacob Stallings, who told him to breathe. “I don’t know if I was breathing, so that helped,” Cederlind said.
After that, it was the Reds who were nervous. Cederlind showed off his blow-it-by-you fastball and slider in a 14-pitch, 1-2-3 inning, getting two ground ball outs and a fly to left.
“I think he was pretty amped up,” Derek Shelton said. “He threw the ball in the zone. He got contact, stayed under control. Really positive first outing. I know he’s an emotional kid. For him to have his first outing go 1-2-3 and get contact on all three, I thought it was outstanding.”
That was a little taste of why he not all made the jump from A to class AAA last year, but how he pitched to a 2.28 ERA and cemented himself as one of the club's top pitching prospects.
After missing summer camp with COVID-19, Cederlind showed there has been no drop off in his stuff. It was the same Blake Cederlind everyone saw during the first spring training.
Well, minus the hair. The dyed blonde locks were chopped off when he got the Altoona training camp. “I was just over it. I’ll think about growing it back out.”
When we last talked in August, I told Cederlind that him cutting his hair was going to break some hearts in Pittsburgh. He quipped back, “hopefully they’ll like me for my pitching.”
Well? Do you? It took him two whole pitches to hit triple digits. Ok, it was officially measured at 99.5 mph, but it was still the fastest pitch out of any Pirate this year. And for good measure, it was on the black, too:
“I was real excited,” he said about his night. “I was waiting a long time for that one. So when I got out, it was all smiles."
Cederlind was all smiles throughout the entire Zoom call with the media. Safe to say it was the same in the dugout and clubhouse too, once all that nervous energy got out.
And it’s ok if anyone at home cracked a grin, even as the Pirates fell to 14-33. Cederlind was the most anticipated Pirates pitching prospect who was set to make his debut this season. Not just for fans, but the players were waiting for him to get promoted, too.
“He's a really fun guy to watch pitch, and his mentality and his attitude's infectious,” said Musgrove. “He's a guy we've been waiting on a long time to get up here, and we'll see what he's got, and hopefully he can bring a little spark and a little energy to the team.”
He’s here now.
The Pirates were very mindful that he had his velocity back before he made his debut. That meant a whole lot of waiting. He didn’t start facing batters in Altoona until Aug. 12. He wasn’t activated from the taxi squad in his first look later that month.
After awhile, even he started to wonder if that call was ever coming this year. His soon-to-be teammates joked about it too.
“I had a good feeling last night,” Cederlind said, “then I got here today and got the good news.”
Good things come to those who wait.
“There’s kind of no hitter he shouldn’t be able to get out if he’s able to get his pitches where he wants them,” Ben Cherington said Tuesday.
Now Cederlind is going to be given the opportunity to prove he can get batters out at this level, and make his case for the 2021 bullpen.
Not that Shelton is thinking that far ahead right now. “I don't know if I'm smart enough to think into 2021 right now. I'm trying to figure out today,” he joked pregame.
But if you do look at who is on the roster and who is returning, it’s looking like 2021 is a changing of the guard. Keone Kela is a free agent. Richard Rodriguez was the subject of trade talks during the August deadline. Nick Burdi barely pitched after another major arm injury. Kyle Crick’s stuff never really showed up after the shutdown, and he too spent most of this season injured.
The point is there is playing time to be won, especially late in the game.
“The thing that does excite me is we have a bunch of options, and when you have more options in a bullpen, that tends to better outcomes,” Shelton said. “The fact that we have a lot of options, the fact that guys have put themselves in positions to, by what they've done with the opportunities so far, makes me feel confident about it."
Add the freshly trimmed sinkerballer with the 100 mph heat into that mix.
• Musgrove struck out eight over his five innings, but was still on the hook for four runs.
Three of those runs came in the first, and were in large part due to an 0-2 slider he threw to Mike Moustakas. With the bases loaded and one out, Musgrove was going for the strikeout and threw a back foot slider to Moustakas. The pitch ended up hitting him, as the name would suggest, on his back foot.
Brian Goodwin followed with a sacrifice fly and Freddy Galvis roped an RBI single the following at-bat. Had Musgrove struck out Moustakas instead of hitting him, he theoretically would have escaped the inning unscathed.
“I don’t think he had bad stuff in the first inning," Shelton said. "... I thought his stuff was pretty sharp, and he continued to get better as the game went on. I think we saw his highest velocity in the fifth. He had good stuff."
Despite hitting Moustakas with a slider, that ended up being his best pitch on the night. He threw it 18 times and got seven whiffs and three called strikes with it.
"After that first inning, I was pretty consistent with the action and the location on it," Musgrove said.
Musgrove threw 87 pitches, two more than the 85 Shelton had wanted his limit to be. It stands to reason that he could pitch without any restrictions in his final two starts of the season.
"My body's starting to feel really good," Musgrove said. "It's a bummer that we only have two starts left, but yeah, this is, regardless of what happened in the first inning, there's still a lot of good to take away from it. You get beat up a little bit in the first inning, you can't fold and call it a night. You've got to still battle and compete, and I was able to give us four more strong innings after that first and a chance for us to start chipping away and get back in the game."
• The offense didn't manage to get much going, though, recording one run on five hits. Michael Lorenzen, making a spot start, struck out six over five innings pitched, allowing just one run.
“I thought Lorenzen’s changeup was good," Shelton said. "He executed it and did a really good job. They kinda kept us off-balance the whole game."
• I'll give you one guess who was responsible for the Pirates' only offense Tuesday:
That Ke'Bryan Hayes double was 104.5 mph off the bat, and he scored on a seeing-eye single from Colin Moran. And like his home run Monday night, that was a low offspeed pitch that he stayed back on and hit hard.
After seeing mostly fastballs his first week and a half in the majors, he's showing that he isn't so easily fooled by the slower stuff.
• Moran almost had a second RBI in the ninth, but Goodwin had other plans:
The Pirates would later get two runners on in the ninth to bring the tying run to the plate, but Cole Tucker struck out and pinch-hitter Kevin Newman lifted a softly hit fly ball to right.
• Gregory Polanco went 0-for-3 Monday with three strikeouts and a walk. His season slash line is now .138/.194/.301. He has now struck out in 41.5% of his plate appearances.
But it looks like he will keep playing through this final week and a half of the regular season.
“We have to continue to get him out there," Shelton said. "We have to continue to make sure he gets his at-bats and work through it. He’s going to work through it, and he’s going to be a big part of what we’re doing not only at the end of this year but into next year.”
And yes, he is part of the club's 2021 plans, Cherington affirmed before the game.
"Nobody doesn't want to perform; certainly, he doesn't," Cherington said. "He's coming in here every day, getting back after it with his work and has been a good teammate. He's still really young and at a point in his career where there's no reason to think that he can't be a really good player again. I would expect him to be. I look forward to him doing that in a Pirates uniform next year."
• Factoid of the night: Polanco has had 135 plate appearances this season. The last Pirates batter to record a batting average lower than his .138 and finish with at least that many plate appearances was Mark Baldwin in 1892, per Stathead Baseball. Baldwin batted .101 over 191 plate appearances, and served primarily as a pitcher with the Pirates.