MILWAUKEE -- A familiar presence walks among the Pirates in 2021.
It’s the same presence that was absent last year when the club finished with baseball’s worst record. But the presence announced its return Sunday with a thunderous crack of the bat that pulled the pin out of American Family Field.
Of course, it’s the Bryan Reynolds of 2019 who's finally reappeared.
Reynolds launched a monstrous go-ahead homer and scored the eventual game winning run in a 6-5 win against the Brewers on Sunday at American Family Field. He reached base safely in 10 of his 13 plate appearances, while actually getting on via a throwing error in one of his unsuccessful trips, as the Pirates won a series in their forever House of Horrors for the first time since 2018.
“Obviously, it’s good to win series,” Reynolds said. “We had a rough start, to answer back the way we have speaks a lot to who we are as a team. We’ll just keep it going.”
The Pirates are 7-9 after losing six of their first seven games to start the season. They have been without Ke’Bryan Hayes since Game 2 but are currently being reaffirmed that they have more than one franchise cornerstone to consider for their future.
Until last year, Reynolds had fit the profile of a guy who could hit no matter where he was in the world. He was a .329 hitter in college at Vanderbilt, batted .312 throughout four minor league seasons and debuted with a .314 average for the Pirates in 2019. But somehow, through 55 games in the pandemic-shortened season, Reynolds hit .189/.275/.357 with seven homers and 19 RBIs in 2020.
After an apparent adjustment with his hands, he showed signs of a turnaround with a .304 spring average. Then he looked nearly lost at the plate against breaking balls and seemed to be waving at everything that wasn’t a fastball in the early part of the regular season.
But in the past nine games, Reynolds is batting .371 with three extra-base hits and six RBIs. His numbers against breaking pitches are still pretty ugly -- .077 batting average on breaking balls according to Statcast -- but he showed an ability to stay on a pitch with some movement in the third inning Sunday.
Opposing batters were hitting .048 against Freddy Peralta’s slider. But with a runner on, Peralta left one over the plate to Reynolds, who stayed on it and roped it onto the warning track beyond Avisail Garcia’s head.
“I was just trying to get a good pitch to hit,” said the mild-mannered Reynolds. “Felt like I was seeing the pitches well.”
Although Josh Hader blew Reynolds away with fastballs in the ninth inning -- which was a tough situation after seeing pitches from the other side of the plate all game -- Reynolds has been mashing heaters. He’s batting .455 against fastballs and got all of the one that Brad Boxberger threw him in the seventh, which was left over the plate and elevated enough that it might as well have been on a tee for Reynolds.
“I think when they do home runs and they say how far it is, let's just say ‘far,’ ” Derek Shelton joked. “That was about as well-struck as you can hit it. That’s up on the third concourse. ... That was long.”
The homer was credited with 436 feet of distance, but Colin Moran felt Reynolds got cheated based on his view from the on-deck circle.
“I heard it was like 430 or something. It had to go further than that,” Moran said.
This version of Reynolds -- well, not this exact torrid, unsustainable pace, but the one reminiscent of the hitter he was in 2019 -- paired with the return of Hayes should be what keeps the Pirates out of the basement in 2021.
Reynolds proved Sunday that he can provide some roster relief in the outfield for when Hayes does return. Phillip Evans and Erik Gonzalez have done well to cover Hayes’ position at third, while hitting well enough to earn regular at-bats. Anthony Alford and Dustin Fowler, a platoon which was “Plan A” for the Pirates in center field at the start of the season, have largely been disappointments at the plate.
Shelton shifted Reynolds from his usual spot in left to center field after a double switch in the sixth inning. Reynolds has already logged plenty of major league innings in center field. And with a few difficult plays patrolling that position Sunday, namely a ball hit to the wall by Keston Hiura, Reynolds proved that the Pirates are not losing anything defensively with Reynolds in center.
When Hayes does return, Alford, Fowler or Wilmer Difo’s spot on the major league roster is likely to be in jeopardy. Shelton and Ben Cherington have given no indication that the club wants to move away from its current 14-pitcher roster construction. And Cherington said Thursday that they’ll be taking a patient approach with Alford and Fowler.
While it seems likely that Difo -- a natural infielder who’s been an occasional experiment in center -- will be the one designated for assignment upon Hayes’ arrival, if Reynolds is comfortable in center, Shelton won’t be forced to use a struggling Alford or Fowler on a daily basis.
“He’s definitely comfortable out there. He takes balls out there and he's played center field in the past, so my comfort with him out there is very strong,” Shelton said. “It just depends on how we're gonna do our lineups.”
Sure, it’s only 16 games into the season. And any apprehension about christening the return of the “real” Bryan Reynolds might be premature. But during a stretch in which the Pirates are actually playing good baseball, its hit impact is too great not to notice.
MORE FROM THIS GAME
• Although Reynolds was excellent for the third game in a row against the Brewers, the real heroes of Sunday’s win were Moran and Rich Rodriguez.
Moran delivered the go-ahead run on a 10th inning double and a three-run homer in the third, and Rodriguez kept his ERA spotless and retired the last six batters in order without so much as allowing the free extra-innings runner to advance to third.
“It was a good series for us to come on the road against a really good team,” Moran said. “To take two out of three is a real good series. It felt great to contribute to a good team win.”
Moran has said that he’s simply been trying to take what the pitcher gives him in at-bats with runners in scoring position this season. And the strategy seems to be paying off as he’s 6-for-17 (.353) with eight RBIs in those spots so far.
“Not necessarily [trying to be heroes], just trying to have good at bats up there,” Moran said. “The rest kind of takes care of itself, I think. Staying within yourself and, bottom line, getting a good pitch to hit. If not, staying off the pitchers’ pitches.”
For the second time in the series, Moran went to the opposite field for a homer. His three-run shot put the Pirates ahead, 3-2, in the third inning. Moran has gathered half of his team-leading 12 RBIs over a week-long stretch.
The 28-year-old first baseman has been working to stay behind the baseball and drive it to the opposite field in the early part of the season. So far, he’s shooting the ball to the left side more than 36 percent of the time when it’s put in play, which is about 10 percent greater than what’s been the norm throughout his career.
But he had to switch up his approach against J.P. Feyereisen in the 10th and pull a ball into the right field corner.
“It seemed like in that first at-bat they’d thrown me some fastballs away,” Moran recalled. “That last inning, a guy on second, nobody out, I was trying to get something to pull there so that worst-case I get the runner over. It just kind of worked out.”
Rodriguez has not allowed a run in 6 ⅓ innings this season. His outing Sunday was the first in which he’s worked more than a single frame.
“If you watch Richie Rodriguez pitch, I don't know if he has a pulse. If you ask him to throw four innings every day, he would do it,” Shelton said. “What makes him good is his ability to spin a fastball and and work the slider off it.”
• Don’t go giving up on Chad Kuhl just yet. After an ugly first inning, he held the line to complete five frames.
“I really felt like I had good stuff from the start today,” Kuhl said. “Got to be better from the start, but the rest of the way it was completely fine and back to normal.”
Even with some bad luck and a tight zone, the first-inning troubles that were touched upon Saturday persisted into the fourth turn through the rotation for Pirates’ starters.
Kuhl allowed a pair of runs on three hits, including a Daniel Vogelbach solo shot and an RBI double by Travis Shaw in the opening frame. Kuhl needed 30 pitches to get through the frame and is averaging 31.25 pitches in four first innings so far.
But, much like he has almost in every start this season, Kuhl looked like a different pitcher after the early trouble Sunday. Sure, there were the regular command issues that plagued him throughout his career. And he could not protect the one-run lead he was given on Moran’s three-run homer in the third, surrendering a solo shot to Garcia.
But, even though he’s had a rough year altogether, that hiccup was an outlier for Kuhl. He settled in to allow just three runs on five hits with a walk and six strikeouts.
Kuhl entered the game with just two hits and nine walks allowed to 39 batters faced after throwing his 25th pitch of a given outing. After pitch No. 25 on Sunday, Kuhl yielded just two hits -- the Garcia long ball and Jackie Bradley Jr.’s fifth-inning double -- and walked one of the 16 batters he faced.
• Although it works out geographically that Hayes will play an alternate site rehab game in Toledo, Ohio while the Pirates will be just an hour away in Detroit, Shelton has not committed to the idea that Hayes will join the team for the upcoming series against the Tigers, and will continue to evaluate day to day.
Hayes participated in live BP at full speed Sunday, which Shelton said was an important development in his rehab from the wrist injury that’s kept him out since April 4.
“Velocity is something that's important for all hitters, just because of the vibration of the bat, and he looked fine,” Shelton said. “There [were] no issues at all.”
THE ESSENTIALS
THE LINEUPS
Shelton's card:
Adam Frazier, 2B
Phillip Evans, 3B
Bryan Reynolds, LF
Colin Moran, 1B
Erik Gonzalez, SS
Gregory Polanco, RF
Dustin Fowler, CF
Michael Perez, C
Chad Kuhl, P
And for Craig Counsell's Brewers:
Jackie Bradley Jr., CF
Daniel Vogelbach, 1B
Avisail Garcia, RF
Travis Shaw, 3B
Keston Hiura, 2B
Billy McKinney, LF
Manny Pina, C
Daniel Robertson, SS
Freddy Peralta, P
THE SCHEDULE
The Pirates get the day off Monday before beginning a series in Detroit on Tuesday night. Tyler Anderson (1-2, 4.02 ERA) takes the mound against right-hander Michael Fulmer (1-0, 3.00) with first pitch scheduled for 6:40 p.m.
THE CONTENT
Visit our team page for everything.
