ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- The Pirates needed to come into this week's series against the Rays playing clean, tight baseball. Instead, they've hurt themselves more than any shoddy umpiring or the Rays themselves possibly could.
Missed opportunities in the field and at the plate hurt the Pirates in their 4-1 loss on Tuesday night. Somehow, they managed to get worse as they fell to the Rays, 8-1, on Wednesday night at Tropicana Field.
After Andrew McCutchen put the Pirates up, 1-0, with a solo home run in the top of the third inning, Mitch Keller continued his strong start with two quick outs. But, before Keller could finish off the shutdown inning, Yandy Díaz and Wander Franco ripped back-to-back singles to put runners on the corners.
Keller bounced back and got Harold Ramirez to hit the ground ball he needed to escape the inning with the 1-0 lead intact. However, Castro was unable to come up with the routine grounder cleanly, allowing the Rays to tie the game with a painful E6:
The Rays capitalized on the extra out and took a 3-1 lead in the very next at-bat when Brandon Lowe drove in the two runners with a double.
A situation in which the Pirates could have taken a 1-0 lead into the fourth inning, just like that, they trailed, 3-1, instead. This coming after another game lost mainly due to unforced mistakes.
"We just haven’t played well," Derek Shelton said. "I don’t know if there’s anything specific to it, if it’s the fact that it’s the ball on the turf. There’s a lot of factors to it. We just haven’t played well and they’re really good. If you give them extra outs, they will capitalize on it. With the way their pitching is, you cannot give them extra outs."
It's really a shame this inning got out of hand for the Pirates. Keller arguably had his best stuff on the mound and deserved better than five runs allowed (one earned) in five innings of work.
"It’s baseball. It’s going to happen," Keller said. "We’re going to make errors. We’re going to do dumb stuff. It’s just how can we get out of that mindset, flush it and move on."
