CHICAGO – Clint Hurdle summed up what has been working so well for the Chicago Cubs — sitting 47-20 after completing a three game sweep of the Pirates tonight with a 10-5 win — and it perfectly reflected what is going so wrong for the Pirates.
“The biggest thing that’s going for them, when you can pitch it like them out of the starting rotation, everything spins off that,” Hurdle said. “That’s what they’ve done extremely well.”
The Pirates, on the other hand, have seen their rotation become a disaster. Part of that is Neal Huntington’s fault for using three rotation spots on questionable options, and not having a third guy the quality of Gerrit Cole or Francisco Liriano heading into the year. Their off-season approach was built around waiting for the prospects to arrive, and now that two of the three prospects aren’t ready to arrive, they’re in trouble.
But part of that is also unavoidable. Francisco Liriano went from one of the best pitchers in baseball the previous three years to being one of the worst starters in the game this year. Gerrit Cole was the only starter who was putting up good numbers, and he’s now injured. I don’t think you could have expected big things from all three of the other starters, but I also don’t think it was inevitable that all of them would struggle this much.
And so here we are, on June 19th, and the Pirates are relying on a rookie to be their stopper. Jameson Taillon looked excellent last time out, completely shutting down the Mets in his second professional start. That ended a five game losing streak for the Pirates. Tonight, Taillon came into the Sunday night game looking to do it again, with the Pirates carrying a four game losing streak.
But the problem with relying on a rookie to be your only reliable starter is that rookies shouldn’t be expected to be reliable every time out in their first few outings. That was apparent tonight, when Taillon lasted only four innings, giving up four runs on eight hits, with a walk and five strikeouts. Most of the damage came from three home runs.
“The ball was up today,” Hurdle said of Taillon. “He wasn’t in a position to get ground ball outs. 33 pitches in the first inning. I think he had to work a little bit more than we wanted him to. … It’s just a different outing. He just wasn’t as sharp.”
A big issue for Taillon was that he was getting behind in the count. He only threw 10 of 20 first pitch strikes, which was a huge turnaround from where he was in his last outing.
“Strike one [was my biggest issue],” Taillon said. “I thought stuff-wise I felt pretty good actually. I felt pretty crisp. Threw some good changeups, some good breaking balls. Showed a good two-seamer a couple of times. I just needed to get ahead a little better.”
The first inning was out of control, with Taillon starting the game off with 33 pitches. This led to him throwing 85 pitches in the outing in his four innings. The big stage might have played a role for the rookie, leading to the rough start.
“It kind of got sped up on me in the first,” Taillon said. “I went to the stretch pretty quickly there. I was trying to make big leverage pitches in the first. They fouled off some competitive pitches, and hit some decent pitches early.”
But as Taillon learned, if you make a mistake at this level, the hitters will capitalize on it. And a team like this will capitalize more often than not. That led to the three homers, all solo shots.
“Upper level hitters in general, Triple-A guys are better than Double-A guys at hitting mistakes,” Taillon said. “Big league guys are better than Triple-A guys at hitting mistakes. It’s a professional team, good hitters, talented hitters. They take care of your mistakes.”
As Hurdle said, starting pitching can set the tone for everything else. In tonight’s case, Taillon struggled, which means the Pirates had to turn to their middle relief for the final four innings. A.J. Schugel pitched two innings, looking good in the first, but giving up a two run homer in his second frame, putting the Cubs up 6-1.
The Pirates battled back, scoring three runs in the top of the seventh to pull within two. However, Curtis Partch came on and gave up three runs without recording an out. Two of those runs scored off Jorge Rondon, who gave up one of his own on a two run homer to Addison Russell. If there’s any hope for bullpen help from Triple-A, it’s shattered with Partch and Rondon. They had the best results of the relievers in Triple-A, and continued the bullpen struggles in the majors tonight.
“We’re getting ourselves underneath games,” Hurdle said on how to shake up the team. “We’ve got to find some answers off the mound. Collectively, as a group, they’re going to roll up their sleeves and keep going to work. As far as shaking up, we need to play a complete game. That would shake things up. Pitch it really well, catch it really well, score some runs.”
Marte the Lone Bright Spot
The one bright spot tonight was Starling Marte’s return to the lineup. He went 3-for-5 with a triple and two RBIs, helping to lead the offense to five runs on 13 hits.
“I just told the trainer, whatever you did to Marte, do it to everybody,” Hurdle said. “That might shake things up.”
With the exception of the catching situation, the lineup might finally be getting back to a point where the Pirates are healthy. That’s a good thing, as they’ll have some tough pitching matchups this week, with Madison Bumgarner on Monday and Johnny Cueto on Tuesday.
