Bednar blows yet another late lead, calls it 'unacceptable'

After blowing a second straight save, David Bednar put it simply while standing in front of his locker: "That's just unacceptable."

This came mere minutes after he blew a one-run lead -- one the Pirates had built after erasing an early four-run deficit -- in the ninth inning of what wound up a 7-6 loss to the Padres Thursday afternoon at PNC Park.

On this day, Bednar gave up a single to Xander Bogaerts, walked Jackson Merrill, struck out David Peralta and walked Ha-Seong Kim, before inducing a soft-hit ground ball to Isiah Kiner-Falefa that could've been a game-ending double play. However, Oneil Cruz's hurried throw to first base went wide and two runs came across to score.

Here's that game-breaking sequence.

Shelton would later say that Cruz's throw was "One of those damned if you do, damned if you don't throw it. If you don't throw it, everyone wants to know why you didn't throw it. With that arm, he just got fast and ended up throwing it away."

Luis Arraez put a cherry on top with a double to deep right-center field that made it 7-5, effectively ending the game and possibly the Pirates' season. 

Here's what Bednar had to say:

"The guys battle back both games, and it’s just a big-time letdown on my end," Bednar said. "Today was incredibly frustrating, just a lot of free stuff, and that just can’t happen." 

 "These guys deserve better," he would say later.

Bednar's final line was 2/3 of an inning, two hits, three runs, a strikeout and two walks. He threw 25 pitches, just 12 for strikes. His struggles have been brewing over his past four appearances: 3 2/3 innings, seven hits, six runs and six walks while only striking out four.

Bednar said he has been dealing with control issues, and it's something that he's continuing to work through and needs to iron out. He went through a stretch like this in early March and was able to right the ship for 19 consecutive saves before this.

"Absolutely," Bednar said when asked if going through that will help him work this particular rough stretch. "Obviously, this really sucks. There’s no other way around it. But I have total confidence in myself to get back on the right track. And there’s still a lot of season left."

Yes, but the road gets even tougher from here as the Pirates now head to Los Angeles to play the first-place Dodgers. They finish off that six-game trip down I-5 against the same Padres that just handed them three straight losses. It also comes on the back of losing five of the past six, four of which came by one run. 

The most frustrating part of this recent slump, the way Derek Shelton would describe it, is that the Pirates looked like they belonged ... at least for a short time. They held a lead in four of those five losses before succumbing to their opponents due to a lack of pitch execution. The offense has been there. They scored 31 runs during this six-game homestand, one of which was a 6-0 loss. But the pitching late in games hasn't.

"For these last three or four or five games, it's executing pitches at the end of the game. That is what we have not done," Shelton said. "Offensively, we've done a good job, and we've put ourselves in a position to win games. We battle back and we're down 4-0 today and continue to battle back. Joey hits the big home run. We have good at-bats. We have good at-bats with two strikes. We got to execute pitches late in the game, and we're not doing that right now." 

On this day, despite all five of the Pirates' runs coming in a two-inning stretch, which included a three-run sixth and a two-run blast by Joey Bart in the seventh, the script again was about pitch execution.

The pitch Bednar threw Wednesday night that Jackson Merrill sent to the stands in right-center field, tells the story:

Right. Down. The. Middle. That's the definition of a lack of pitch execution. Bednar knows it, Shelton knows it. 

So what do they do about it? 

Bednar said he needs to iron it out. Shelton went back to fastball execution. The guy who gave Bednar and the Pirates the lead on this day had an answer, too.

"Just go give him confidence. He's done it a lot of times. There's no hiding that," Bart said. "The guy knows how to end games, just been scuffling a little bit. I know we've got full support of him. We know he'll bring it. This game's hard and it's relentless. It will keep coming and it won't stop. You just know you gotta fight through it and that's what's gonna happen to everybody, offensively, defensively, out there in the bullpen with everything going on. We'll find a way through it."

They'd better do so quickly. There are 48 games left. Of those, 10 are against teams ahead of them in the divisional standings or the wild card race, nine are against divisional leaders and 22 are against teams first or second in their divisions. It's a tough road.

And it just might start with finding ways to win one-run games. 

When asked about that, Bart replied, "We know we gotta win those games. When it comes down to it, those one-run games are huge. There's a lot of one-run games won every year by good clubs. We've won one-run games but lately, we haven't. So, we'll be better. We'll find ways to win. We'll get something going at some point and we just gotta have faith we'll find a way through it."