SAINT PETERSBURG, Fla. – The Pirates look to rebound against the Rays in game two of this three game series, after losing 4-1 last night. The best pitchers for each team will take the mound, as Mitch Keller goes up against Shane McClanahan.
I’m covering the game live, and joining in on the discussion throughout. Join the game discussion in the comments below.
PIRATES AT RAYS
Game Time: 6:40 PM EST
Pirates Starter: Mitch Keller (3-0, 3.53)
Rays Starter: Shane McClanahan (5-0, 2.12)
Pirates Lineups:
Round 2.
📺 AT&T SportsNet
📻 93.7 The Fan | The PRN #LetsGoBucs pic.twitter.com/tvDntbmkwA— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) May 3, 2023
Rays Lineups:
Today’s Rays#RaysUp pic.twitter.com/jodB7dj5Cw
— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) May 3, 2023
Tim started Pirates Prospects in 2009 from his home in Virginia, which was 40 minutes from where Pedro Alvarez made his pro debut in Lynchburg. That year, the Lynchburg Hillcats won the Carolina League championship, and Pirates Prospects was born from Tim's reporting along the way. The site has grown over the years to include many more writers, and Tim has gone on to become a credentialed MLB reporter, producing Pirates Prospects each year, and will publish his 11th Prospect Guide this offseason. He has also served as the Pittsburgh Pirates correspondent for Baseball America since 2019. Behind the scenes, Tim is an avid music lover, and most of the money he gets paid to run this site goes to vinyl records.
Looking around the league, they still are in a good place. Hope that they learn and get a W tomorrow.
Being a UConn alum, this series feels eerily similar to the Huskies in this year’s NCAA tourney – close first halves, then pressure and pull away.
So, I’m not the only UConn Huskies+Pirates fan? Cool beans.
We’re seeing the younger guys look like young players in this series. TB makes no mistakes, so there is pressure to play perfect baseball. We’re seeing it come through in the field and at the plate. Hopefully, it’s a good learning experience for them and not just demoralizing.
Peguero hit a homer tonight
Triolo, Cruz, and Endy will make this team look very different
The current lineup is weak up the middle on D
Hedges now batting .133. Too bad the veteran tenure rules don’t allow Shelton to hit for him.
Sheldon won’t let anyone hit for him. Has Hedges thrown anyone out stealing?
Home run aside, that was some nice pitching by Rule 5.
He’s due for some leverage opportunities.
Rays putting Fairbanks on 15-day smells like how the Dodgers used to manipulate the rules to keep their pitching staff fresh.
Wouldn’t doubt it. And the way they work the waiver wire, claimed, used, disposed.
Crushed!
That pretty much describes how I feel to a T.
Long season brother peaks and valleys. Besides anything close to 80 wins is a good season!
Well, now he no longer has to worry about giving up that first dinger.
0-for-15 in the series wRISP
Not. Ready.
That’s the killer. Their minor league clubs are also awful with RISP.
IMO, they’d have scored Joe before this series. Whether that’s McClanahan or they’re tight, you’re right, they’re not there yet.`
Going into the series, I think they were leading MLB in BA wRISP. But they’ve fallen flat, with a lot of extremely bad ABs.
If I can be completely honest, this is one of those games where I wish that I was home taking bong rips.
Castro is overmatched by McClanahan. Badly.
I just wrote about how Castro is crushing lefties, and that his swings have become focused low and away. McClanahan is pitching him inside, or high and away.
So you are to blame, I’m telling Green W.
I may have also bought a new Rays hoodie and a Randy Arozarena shirt yesterday.
I don’t know what side I’m on.
A. Big portion of the league is
Brutal night for Rudy
The field is made of rubber!
Give Keller credit. He kept battling long enough to get, what, five outs? Six?
Just to add to the evening — Termarr has come up three times tonight: one walk and two strikeouts.
I could see if he was hitting weak grounders. But all of these whiffs! Not at all what any of us expected from a guy with such a highly praised hit tool. And since that’s his one carrying tool, that’s pretty scary.
Is he, maybe, adjusting to having money for the first time and making some bad teenager choices? Or is the jump to A- that big for a (highly acclaimed) HS hitter?
All the ML clubs have better players because the cutback of teams. Less players make better players. He still a couple yrs young for Bradenton.
If it’s such a big jump for him, he’s not the guy he was touted to be.
Which is why I would’ve rather they chose Elijah Green. If the power didn’t develop, then maybe the hit tool would. Or, if he never hit a ton, maybe he would have enough power to still be productive. And, if both do develop, you have a middle-of-the-order thumper superstar.
Wow….let give up on an 18 year old kid before he’s had 100 AB’S. SMH.
That’s fair. It’s just discouraging to see him start this way. I really hope that he just needs some time to find his swing.
Ughh. That is very unfortunate to hear.
And he just committed an error to start a rally in a tie game.
And another three-K game.
Mcclanahan is at about 90 pitches… So… Their bullpen is depleted.
That’s all I got.
The Pirates haven’t played like this all year, which raises the question whether they just aren’t mentally ready yet to play a team as good as the Rays.
Or which one is the real Pirate team? There’s no excuse for playing like this regardless of the opponent. A good team elevates its game against a better team instead of falling apart. We’ll see if the veterans can help them get past this fiasco or if they regress to the mean of the past couple of years.
Or it’s just a couple of bad games they’re due for.
The dodgers came into Pittsburgh and was lucky to leave with 1 win. Then goes home and beat St. LOUIS 3 games and clobbered Philadelphia. The best team in college loses games.
Sucks Mitch gets charged with earned runs this inning.
Roansy got charged with three last night and only one was his fault. Except for that one, every run in the series has resulted from awful defense.
That’s disappointing
Does he?
One at least.
Gross. Just gross.
Bae has gone from Penthouse to Outhouse and back again about a dozen times tonight.
Going from bad to worse.
Bae giveth. Bae taketh away.
This is sickening
This defense is an abomination. Poor Mitch
Bae, Castro, Reynolds D preventing an absolute gem by Keller. Zero earned runs and 7 k’s through 4. Really spotting on the edges. Shenanigans of the before mentioned cost him 10-15 pitches at minimum.
I don’t want to jinx it but Keller looks like top 15-20 starter in MLB to me recently
More than any other area (except manager), the defense on this time still needs a lot of work. I don’t see any evidence in this series that the Rays hit or pitch better than the Pirates. But they field and manage better.
There’s plenty of evidence. McClanahan is better than anyone we can throw. He has Cy Young candidate arm. They used their entire pen last night and shut our bats down. They have plenty of professional hitters who have professional ABs……their lineup is unquestionably full of better hitters.
“Except manager!” Wilbur, be nice.
Revisiting this in the 8th inning, you still feel Rays can’t hit better?
Agree. Rays are just more fundamentally sound.
They’re the best run team in the game.
Ok guys, it’s only 3-1. We are still in it.
Keller looks phenomenal imo.
He did a hell of a job keeping the team in the game that inning.
Looks like the damn circus showed up in Tampa
I STRONGLY encourage anyone who has MLBTV to replay Shelton losing his mind on the Rays’ broadcast. You can hear EVERYTHING Shelton says and it’s one of the cooler things I’ve seen in awhile.
Summary?
3B Ump decided he needed to be the star of the show tonight. Maybe he was pissed Shelton told the world he knows he F’ed up last night by not calling the balk?
F$@K YOU!
NO
F@&K YOU!
Hedges is hard to watch at the plate.
Having hedges hit is like having a pitcher bat.
Especially when they have Delay, who’s hitting .390 on the bench.
This is Shelton. The larger the gap between Hedges and Delay becomes, the more determined he’ll become to play Hedges.
And I’m heartily sick and tired of hearing about Hedges handling the pitching staff. The big stretch this year started while Hedges was out. The REAL beginning of the improvement started last year with Delay and Heineman catching. At least try to correlate the Hedges mythology with actual events.
It’s a long season, guys. Longer watching Hedges batting.
Agree with you guys. I get Hedges does well with the pitching staff but watching him bat is getting tough.
Ump show. You know that excites Brown, he loves this stuff. He probably can’t stand up.
I love Shelton’s fire.
Well, we all knew Castro was not a shortstop. Really, he wasn’t even good as a second baseman. Just have to grin and bear it until Cruz gets back.
3 errors since that first game or 2 since Cruz went down. He’s doing just fine considering the situation they put him in.
Kinda getting the impression of a team playing out of its division.
They’re learning what it takes. And of course, this isn’t THE TEAM just yet.
Or a team not used to playing on 1970’s style Astro turf.
That explains Reynolds’ misplay. Not Andujar, Castro, and Bae not fumbling around.
It played a part in ball hit to Bae and Castro, IMO.
They’re gonna need better excuses than that.
Need to stop searching for excuses of any kind. They know where they’re playing. These are just bad baseball plays especially that lack of effort by Castro.
Excuses? Who’s making excuses? It’s a simple fact one team plays 81 games on a surface nobody else in baseball plays on. And it happened to play a major factor in all of the run scoring plays.
And there’s no lack of effort by Castro or anyone else.
29 other teams have to play on that surface from time to time, yet the Rays don’t win all their games there.
I think they have in fact won all their home games so far this season.
Lack of effort? Your think his teammates would be trying to pick him up if they thought he wasn’t trying?
Wtf is happening?
Poor defense and Keller serving up a couple meatballs.
Yep. Seeing the limitation of those guys in the MI.
Christ, freaking trash defense. Let’s give them six outs.
Horrible defensive showing this inning by the MI’s.
Jingo!!!
This team is firing on all cylinders!
Welp… Almost
LET’S GOOOOOOOO
You could see Siri turn to the umpire after the strikeout on the Rays’ feed. And you couldn’t see what he said but you can clearly read the umpire responding, “Yeah man, I think it was off the plate a little. But not by much!”
KKKeller, #extendKeller
KKKKeller, #extendKeller
I missed almost the whole inning, wow, anyway, KKKKKeller, #extendKeller.
KKKKKKKeller, #extendKeller.
At least Bae walked that inning so they could clear the Pitchers (Hedges) spot in the lineup.
Remember Steven Brault batting?
That was fun.
pitchers…..
sorry, could not help myself😁😁
I deserve that.
🤣🤣🤣
is there a way to search text from all our comments?
i´d like to point out all the times in 2018 that my sources encouraged the team to draft McLanahan with the 10th pick
Only if you also post how many times I begged for Pirates to sign Sonny Gray.
that was not me
Nice start Mitch!!
Lets Go Bucs!
KKeller, #extendKeller
I thought Delay was Keller’s catcher….
Also, incredible AB’s so far.