Pittsburgh Pirates Wake-Up Call – Not a Bad Debut

In our daily Wake-Up Call, we get you ready for the day with a complete look at all things Pittsburgh Pirates.

Things went as many hoped, and as some expected they would for Jameson Taillon in his major league debut yesterday. The final line on Taillon was six innings, three runs (all earned), three strikeouts, and two walks. That’s as baseline a start as you can get for a quality start, but the Pirates will take that in a debut. Taillon’s fastball showed good velocity and he hit 97 at times, and was still able to hit 95 in the sixth inning. If there was anything to pick at in his start, it was his control. Taillon only issued six free passes this year in Indianapolis, but walked two last night. He also got behind in counts on multiple occasions, but I liked how he battled back in many of those counts. To get more of our input on Taillon’s outing, and whether we think he’ll stay with the big league club or not, give a listen to our rapid reaction podcast from last night:

https://soundcloud.com/pbcbreakdown/ep-32-rapid-reaction-taillon-debut

Outside of Taillon, it was nice to see Tony Watson rebound for a dominant ninth inning in which he struck out all three batters he faced. Watson needs to bounce back from his recent stretch of bad outings to help compliment Mark Melancon and Neftali Feliz on the back-end.

The Pirates did end up falling in extra innings to the Mets, 6-5, and they left 11 guys on base in the process. The Pirates had a chance down one with two on and no outs in the bottom of the 10th, but instead of electing to have Sean Rodriguez bunt the runners over, Rodriguez swung away and into a double play. It was an interesting decision by Clint Hurdle, but it’s easy to look back afterwards and be critical. Taking two out of three from the Mets is still a positive.

Pittsburgh Pirates Player of the Game

Who was your Player of the Game as the #Pirates fall 6-5 to the #Mets in extras?

— Jason Rollison (@jrollisonpgh) June 9, 2016

Baseball Talk from Around the Web

• Yesterday, the Mets acquired utility man Kelly Johnson from the Braves for minor league RHP Akeel Morris and cash. This is the second year in a row the Mets have traded for Johnson.
• Mike Axisa of CBS Sports takes a look back at the 2011 draft, five years later, on the eve of the 2016 MLB Draft. Gerrit Cole was first overall selection of a loaded draft class that year.
• Cameron DaSilva breaks down the best draft pick ever for all 30 MLB teams. Take a read to find out who the (not-so-surprising) best Pirates’ pick was.

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