The Pirates have already been forced to have a short memory and move on from one shutout loss, and they followed that in Cincinnati with five consecutive wins.
Now, they’ll have to flush this 5-0 loss to the Padres and press the reset button with Paul Skenes taking the mound Tuesday night.
“We can definitely do it,” said Nick Gonzales, who had one of the Pirates’ seven hits. “Obviously we won five in a row, we turned it around after that one game and it’s something we can do. We obviously have a good opponent, but we know the baseball we can play and we just didn't play our game today. We'll make our adjustments and we got a good guy on the bump tomorrow who's going to do his thing. Nine hitters that are going to do their thing, too.”
A year ago, the Pirates fielded one of Major League Baseball’s worst-hitting lineups and were shut out more than any other team (16 times). Their responses to those lackluster performances weren’t very good either. They went 8-8 in the 16 games that followed a shutout loss and here’s the average production in those games: eight hits, one double, 0.75 HR, 2.5 BB, 8 K, .232 batting average, 3.63 runs scored, 3.88 runs against.
This team is different, though. The offense has already put forth better results during this 6-4 start, the starting pitching has lived up to its billing and the bullpen has done enough.
“We can really lean on each other,” Spencer Horwitz told me following a two-hit night. “Whether that be me leaning on Ryan O'Hearn or leaning on Brandon Lowe, because if I have a bad game, they can have a great game. Or if the hitters are struggling, we can lean on the pitchers, and vice versa, the pitchers are struggling, they can lean on the hitters. I think that's a great thing that we have. We don't have to be perfect, but we have different ways of winning games.”
THE ASYLUM
Another short shutout memory?
The Pirates have already been forced to have a short memory and move on from one shutout loss, and they followed that in Cincinnati with five consecutive wins.
Now, they’ll have to flush this 5-0 loss to the Padres and press the reset button with Paul Skenes taking the mound Tuesday night.
“We can definitely do it,” said Nick Gonzales, who had one of the Pirates’ seven hits. “Obviously we won five in a row, we turned it around after that one game and it’s something we can do. We obviously have a good opponent, but we know the baseball we can play and we just didn't play our game today. We'll make our adjustments and we got a good guy on the bump tomorrow who's going to do his thing. Nine hitters that are going to do their thing, too.”
A year ago, the Pirates fielded one of Major League Baseball’s worst-hitting lineups and were shut out more than any other team (16 times). Their responses to those lackluster performances weren’t very good either. They went 8-8 in the 16 games that followed a shutout loss and here’s the average production in those games: eight hits, one double, 0.75 HR, 2.5 BB, 8 K, .232 batting average, 3.63 runs scored, 3.88 runs against.
This team is different, though. The offense has already put forth better results during this 6-4 start, the starting pitching has lived up to its billing and the bullpen has done enough.
“We can really lean on each other,” Spencer Horwitz told me following a two-hit night. “Whether that be me leaning on Ryan O'Hearn or leaning on Brandon Lowe, because if I have a bad game, they can have a great game. Or if the hitters are struggling, we can lean on the pitchers, and vice versa, the pitchers are struggling, they can lean on the hitters. I think that's a great thing that we have. We don't have to be perfect, but we have different ways of winning games.”
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