A lazy Sunday getaway day did not provide enthralling baseball at PNC Park.
The Pirates couldn’t develop much offense against Carlos Martinez and lost to the Cardinals, 3-0, in the afternoon finale. The Pirates out-hit St. Louis, 5-4, but could not push any runs across as the veteran right-hander completed eight innings.
“He had the velo on his four-seam fastball, and, you know, he has such great movement on his two-seamer, and then he throws the cutter and the slider and the changeup, so he pretty much had them all working today it seemed like,” said Jacob Stallings, who remained in the game after taking a 97.5 mph fastball from Martinez off the face in the seventh inning. “He's obviously been throwing well lately, and did it again today. Just kind of missed our barrels and kept us off balance all day.”
The three-game sweep in the first series against the division rival Cardinals dropped the Pirates' record to 12-15 on the season. But even at the root of another ugly stretch -- beginning with Wednesday’s 9-6 loss to the Royals -- the finger still shouldn’t be anywhere near the self-destruct button.
This present four-game losing streak is nothing too out of hand, nor is it something the Pirates can’t come back from. They’ve already done it once before, having climbed out of the basement in the National League central following a 1-6 start to the season.
But if their current misfortune persists beyond a point of concern, there should be a common rallying cry among the fan base: let the kids play.
Should they need to climb out of another hole, it will be different this time around. The minor league season is set to begin Tuesday, and some young prospects could actually earn an opportunity to join the big-league club by playing well in actual games and not just scrimmages.
It’s also a very different major league team than what showed up in Chicago on opening day, due to the wear and tear of a normal season bringing about injuries and other roster moves -- like hitting the kill switch on the original outfield experiment.
For separate reasons, two young players are on the major league roster sort of by default in Wil Crowe and Luis Oviedo. Crowe is filling a vacant rotation spot while opening day starter Chad Kuhl is on the injured list with right shoulder discomfort. Oviedo is a Rule 5 pick and will have to be on the major league roster all season. Regardless of the reasons they’re in the mix right now, both right-handers made the most of their opportunity on Sunday.
For Crowe, it was his second turn through the rotation after he made his first start with the Pirates a week prior in a 6-2 victory against the Twins in Minnesota. He navigated a difficult Cardinals lineup in his PNC Park debut Sunday and was only scored upon when Harrison Bader crushed a three-run homer in the second inning.
“Looking back on the home run, I threw a hanging slider that to me felt good, but it being early in the game, still trying to feel what's going and what's not, I threw an easy one to hit,” Crowe said.
JUSTIN BERL/GETTY
Wil Crowe waits as Harrison Bader rounds the bases after a three-run homer on Sunday at PNC Park.
The homer on the breaking pitch wasn’t much of a surprise based on how Crowe and Derek Shelton evaluated the rookie right-hander’s afternoon. Crowe admitted that he really didn’t have much command of his off-speed pitches and had to execute with the fastball throughout the game. The Cardinals capitalized on Crowe’s limited arsenal in that inning alone. And it made for a pretty significant lesson to learn for the young hurler.
“I think today was a big area of growth,” Shelton said. “It obviously was a learning moment in the second, because of the fact that he threw 40 pitches and continued to go back to those, and then he actually realized, ‘Alright, I’m going to be able to pitch and locate my fastball.’ So yeah, it’s a definite sign of growth to keep us in that game, because it’s a three-run game. We’re in that game. We just didn’t find a way to crack Martinez today.”
Count that lesson among the actual benefits of having young players to throw out there in major league situations. Rookie pitchers making realizations on the mound that help them go three more innings without giving up more than one base runner. It should really make the loss easier to stomach than the 12-5 drubbing of Trevor Cahill and Sean Poppen on Saturday night.
“Progress isn’t always end results,” Crowe said. “I didn’t have my best stuff and I was able to get through the lineup almost three times. I threw five innings. That just shows you that when I do have my best stuff I’m more than capable of going six, seven, eight innings. When you don’t have your best stuff, you’ve just got to grind. I was just out there trying to get guys out, in whatever way it was, and give our guys a chance to win.”
The Cardinals did square up eight balls against Crowe with an exit velocity greater than 95 mph, including Bader’s homer at 106.4 mph and a 107.5 mph double by Paul DeJong in the third. But navigating around hard contact is just another part of pitching in the big leagues that Crowe is working to figure out.
“I didn't have my off-speed, and when they can eliminate those pitches ... they can sit on one pitch. For me, I had to rely on my guys,” Crowe said. “You never want to give up hard-hit balls, but when they're finding gloves, you take them any way you can get them. It's hard to pitch in the big leagues, and getting outs is getting outs. It don't matter if it's 110 off the bat or 50 off the bat to me. Outs is outs.”
After Crowe, another rookie appeared in Oviedo, who last pitched for the Pirates on April 15 . The 21-year-old’s latest MLB outing looked much better than his previous appearances more than two weeks prior. He worked around a Tyler O’Neill double and an intentional walk in the sixth and another free pass in the seventh to complete a pair of scoreless innings.
Most of his 7.27 ERA can be traced back to an April 12 appearance against the Padres, in which he was charged with five runs in 1 ⅔ innings. The day after that game, Shelton actually shouldered some of the blame.
“I think last night was a little bit on me because of the fact that he hadn't pitched in six days. We can't expect a 21-year-old kid to be sharp if we don't pitch him. So I have to do a better job of finding situations for him to get in games,” Shelton said.
Oviedo appeared two days later, and then not again for another 17 days. Even with Oviedo designated to a low-leverage role -- in which Poppen was used in mop-up duty twice this week -- it’ll be a challenge for Shelton to figure out when to use him in a game.
“We needed some length. Even though he has not thrown in major league games, he’s been throwing high intensity on the days we’ve outlined, so he actually has been throwing,” Shelton said. “And he did a nice job. He came in and was extremely efficient to get through their lineup for two innings, and it was a big boost for us.”
So far, the bullpen has been the well-documented and strongest unit on the roster. Richard Rodriguez and Kyle Crick both maintained their spotless ERAs with perfect innings in Sunday’s loss. But if things proceed to trend down for the club overall, there should be no reason for that long of a gap between appearances for a young player like Oviedo.
Obviously, they’re not at that point just yet. But if they should ever get there, Crowe and Oviedo should have earned some further consideration Sunday.
MORE FROM THIS GAME
• Stallings remained in the game behind the plate after taking the pitch flush off most of the right side of his face. He was evaluated and cleared between each inning and had another, longer checkup after the game.
“Just really lucky. Face is a little sore and a little swollen, but other than that. I'm good, so I got lucky for sure,” Stallings said. “... it was scary. It's the first time it's ever happened to me … it hurt but the shock of it is kind of the initial, you know, scared and hoping everything's alright, and once everything slowed down a little bit, I felt like I knew that I was ok.”
Stallings doubled off Martinez in the previous inning and said the veteran righty apologized a few times both after the play and when he got to the plate for an at-bat later in the contest.
“I don’t want to hit somebody like, 0-2, in that situation. So I don’t want to hit somebody, like, on purpose, so when I got to home plate after that in my next at-bat, I said, ‘yo, sorry, man.’” Martinez told reporters in a postgame Zoom call. “Sometimes when I try to throw hard, my balls look crazy. And, you know, I just wanted to say sorry. I don’t want to hit somebody like that, but [it] don’t make me lose the focus, and it happened.”
The potential need to lift Stallings forced an odd decision in the fifth. Crowe, who laced a base hit into left field on the first pitch he’d ever seen in the big leagues, got a second plate appearance after it was already decided that his day on the mound was complete.
“There were a couple of factors. No. 1, he’s our best hitting pitcher. No 2., with where Stallings was at ... to have to burn a position player there and then have to take Stallings out for Mikey Perez would have kind of made it difficult if we made a run to come back because we’re going to have to use two if not three guys, and we’re going to use one of our position players there,” Shelton said.
The plan worked as Crowe drew a walk, but he was doubled off first when Adam Frazier followed with a line drive.
It was the second time this week that a Cardinals pitcher hit an opposing batter in the face with a heater faster than 96 mph. Genesis Cabrera, a lefty reliever who appeared in the first two games of this weekend’s series, caught Bryce Harper under his left eye with a pitch in the Phillies’ 5-3 win against St. Louis last Wednesday. For the first time since getting hit, Harper was in the lineup on Sunday night against the Mets.
THE ESSENTIALS
Box score
Video Highlights
Scoreboard
Standings
Statistics
THE LINEUPS
Shelton's card:
Adam Frazier, 2B
Bryan Reynolds, CF
Colin Moran, 1B
Todd Frazier, 3B
Gregory Polanco, RF
Erik Gonzalez, SS
Jacob Stallings, C
Ka'ai Tom, LF
Wil Crowe, P
And for Mike Shildt's Cardinals:
Tommy Edman, 2B
Dylan Carlson, RF
Matt Carpenter, 1B
Nolan Arenado, 3B
Paul DeJong, SS
Tyler O'Neill, LF
Andrew Knizner, C
Harrison Bader, CF
Carlos Martinez, P
THE SCHEDULE
The Pirates head west for a three-game set with the Padres at Petco Park beginning Monday. Tyler Anderson, Mitch Keller and JT Brubaker are in line to start those games. Yu Darvish is the only Padres' pitcher announced so far. He will be going Wednesday. Dejan Kovacevic will have you covered from California.
THE CONTENT
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