On the heels of a 10-game losing streak, the Pirates took the first two games of the weekend series from the Indians in dramatic fashion.
But when they had the chance to sweep the three-game set, they again, fell short, stranding the tying run on second base in a 2-1 loss Sunday afternoon at PNC Park.
There's nothing really tangible about a series sweep that truly makes it any different from any other two-, three- or four-game win streak. It's also something that's very challenging to accomplish. But the Pirates are the only team in baseball without at least a two-game sweep of a series.
"It’s one of the things I first learned when I got to the big leagues: Winning three of three or four of four, it’s extremely challenging," Derek Shelton said after Sunday's loss. "You play each game differently. I don’t think there’s anything to it but it’s very hard to do.”
The sweep in and of itself holds little significance. Nobody counts the number of sweeps a team collects in a season.
But this latest loss kept up with a recent trend that's put Shelton's decisions with bullpen management and starter workload under the microscope. So much so that the general manager has even had to explain what goes into those thought processes during interviews in each of the past two days.
That one of the more blatant examples of this trend occurred during a game in which the Pirates were looking to clinch a series sweep makes for a interesting coincidence. Looking back at the season, each of the Pirates' four potential sweep-clinchers contained a larger theme which underlined a chapter of what is now a 25-45 season.
These opportunities have been few and mostly far between. And in a season with an increase in injuries league-wide following the pandemic, the Pirates have been a very different team from game to game. Split the Pirates' season into chapters and there's the early success, the first cracks in the foundation -- the bullpen -- and the aforementioned 10-game losing streak.
Before examining where they are, it's worth analyzing how they got there. This little journey down memory lane will be more grief trip than joy ride. But it paints a pretty accurate depiction of the season to date.
APRIL 28: ROYALS 9, PIRATES 6
The Pirates were downright defiant throughout first month of the season.
Coming out of the pandemic-shortened season in which they carried the game's worst record, and dealing with the loss of their best player, Ke'Bryan Hayes, in just the second game of the year, the Pirates managed to be in a very, very unlikely place at the end of April.
It sometimes takes a while for a club to find its identity, but the Pirates sort of figured out who they were right away. They had strength in numbers on the pitching staff, particularly a talented and reliable bullpen. They weren't going to be the team that could sit back and compete in a slugfest, relying on homer after homer to build offense.
This club knew it needed to string hits together, play consistent defense and stay stingy in the later innings. And it worked. They kept finding ways to win and raised the bar with each victory.
They chased Blake Snell in the first inning with nothing but a couple hits and a couple walks and split a series with a very good Padres team. They took a series in Detroit after a couple soft grounders chased a couple runs home. They came back with a vengeance after nearly being no-hit by J.A. Happ in Minnesota.
And on the strength of a weak Kevin Newman grounder and Wilmer Difo's humpback liner, they climbed over .500 with a 12-11 record.
It wasn't luck. It wasn't an easy schedule, though some of those teams have settled near the bottom of the standings since. With the exception of maybe Tyler Anderson, nobody was really playing out of their mind. That was who the Pirates were up to that point.
They were playing good ball.
Then came their first opportunity to sweep and another rough outing from Mitch Keller that the bullpen -- mostly the since-DFA'd Sean Poppen -- could not keep a lid on. The game itself wasn't an abandonment of what had been working to date.
It was, however, the start of a five-game losing streak that was a clear ending to the Pirates' most successful stretch of baseball in now 130 games under Shelton's command.
Within five days they'd fallen from second place in the division -- which, obviously doesn't count for much in April, so wait for the kicker -- to a tie with the now-Central-leading Cubs for last, which is where they've remained ever since.
MAY 30: ROCKIES 4, PIRATES 3
Even as things began to unravel for the Pirates, there was one unit that remained strong and even at the 70-game mark is still the most reliable group on the roster: The bullpen.
Sure, leading up to that game against the lowly Rockies, Adam Frazier made his move on the batting title like he was hitting the first turn at Churchill Downs. But it didn't do much for the team as he was only involved in 23 scoring plays -- 13 runs and eight RBIs -- during a month in which he hit .360 with a .931 OPS.
As evidence by the underwhelming support for Frazier, the offense had sputtered. The Pirates weren't stringing hits together and they didn't all of a sudden start hitting homers as well. Using May 20, the night before an embarrassing 20-1 beat down in Atlanta, as a focus point, the Pirates were at the bottom of the majors with 51 total homers and their 4.96 starter ERA was fourth-worst in baseball.
But, the bullpen was still producing at a high level. That group compiled a 3.76 ERA, which ranked sixth among National League teams and 12th in all of baseball. They were anchored by Richard Rodriguez, who emerged as the best closer in baseball for the first two months of the season.
Rodriguez held a 0.86 ERA in 21 total innings before that series finale against the Rockies on May 30. He issued just one walk in his first outing on opening day and hadn't let up another since. It was almost comical to see Rodriguez groove fastball after fastball in some key moments and watch hitters hit weak pop ups all over the infield.
The first blown save of the year was coming. It's only human. But ironically enough, the first (BS, 1) in the box score next to Rodriguez's name came during that clincher against the Rockies. The cracks in the armor were starting to show.
If it wasn't obvious already, the events of this contest proved that the Pirates will have a very, very hard time winning games on days when other units are left to pick up after the bullpen.
JUNE 6: MARLINS 3, PIRATES 1
While the other "chapters" had been the end cap of certain eras throughout the Pirates' season, this loss actually began a stretch of some of the worst baseball they've played all year.
Not long after tasting some success on the homestand against the Rockies, the Pirates took the first off three pretty convincing games against the Marlins. Hayes returned for the opener of that series and had hit the ground running with five hits in his first 14 at-bats in the series, including a homer, double, triple. Jacob Stallings had continued to show up in the clutch at PNC Park, providing game-winning hits in the first and third games of the series.
Even in the finale, Colin Moran was activated from an injury and it looked the Pirates would finally have a stretch where a pretty formidable top of the lineup might be able to help them win some games.
Again, the loss in the finale wasn't as significant on it's own. But it was the first in a string of 10 consecutive losses. A streak which hadn't been matched by the Pirates in nearly a decade. They were swept by the Dodgers and went winless through a six game trip through Milwaukee and Washington.
It was during that latest trip before the Indians came to town, that the recent topic of Shelton's bullpen management began to start trending.
After losing a batter to a 10-pitch walk in the finale at American Family Field, Wil Crowe was pulled after just 82 pitches despite the retiring 15 consecutive Brewers prior. Sam Howard was pulled in the opener of that same series despite recording four outs on 12 pitches, and Clay Holmes, who had gone 17 consecutive scoreless appearances, was subsequently torched for five runs and his first loss of the year.
The first two wins in the Cleveland series closed the book on this ugly chapter, the 10-game losing streak, but those problems obviously persisted into the present.
Clearly, time will tell if the latest series clincher will be a contact point for a defining stretch of the season.
Right now, it looks like the Pirates have a lot of things to figure out when it comes to their bullpen management. But pointing to these four games truly highlights how inconsistent this season has been and how the Pirates have landed on their current 104-loss pace.
There are reasons for optimism on the horizon. And the events of the next six weeks can have a tremendous impact on the pirates' future.
But it's been a grim reality for the on-field product in 2021.