Last night, the Pittsburgh Pirates had a 3-2 lead going into the sixth inning. Ivan Nova ran into trouble. The bullpen did not pick up his slack. The Pirates gave up four runs in the inning and eventually lost 7-3.
In baseball, a game can turn at any time. Your best reliever can come in and attempt to slam the door shut only to see a lead vanish on a bloop and a blast. The MVP caliber player who has a knack for clutch hitting could roll into a tailor made double play with men on the corners to bring the final rally to an abrupt halt. Many times, Pittsburgh Pirates losses do not come in the ways you would expect.
Game at hand
That was not the case last night for the Pittsburgh Pirates. When the top of the sixth inning began, the Pirates had a win expectancy of 60.3% according to FanGraphs, a good bet to remain undefeated for at least one more day. But alas, by the time Josh Smoker walked off the mound after the third out, that win expectancy number had dropped to 15.8%.
What happened in the intervening time? Nova lost the lead and Pittsburgh’s inexperienced bullpen could not stop the bleeding. 3-2 turned to 6-3 in a matter of minutes. When this front office decided to roll the dice entering the 2018 season with a bullpen full of unproven and/or inexperienced wild cards, these kind of losses that are inevitable. This is magnified early in the season as Clint Hurdle figures out what kind of cards in the deck he possesses.
Bullpen roles
We know that the seven-year Pittsburgh Pirates manager isn’t fond of pitching George Kontos and Felipe Rivero outside of their eighth and ninth inning roles. That leaves the Pirates with just two other arms that have more than 30 innings of big league experience in Michael Feliz and Josh Smoker. Both have career ERAs hovering around 5.
The remaining four of Tyler Glasnow, Steven Brault, Dovydas Neverauskas, and Edgar Santana barely have any big league relief track record to speak of. That is not to say these pitchers do not have their merits. Neverauskas shows mid to upper 90’s heat. Santana flashes a wipeout slider. Glasnow’s ultimate ceiling is a far cry from middle relief work. Brault will be able to pitch multiple innings of quality relief as long as he is in the ‘pen.
In two years, maybe these names will make up a top tier bullpen, but not last night. Nova ran into trouble in the sixth inning, proving to be the highest leverage inning of the night. Hurdle went to Neverauskas and his mid-90s fastball from his grab bag of relievers. That fastball got tagged for a double twice and didn’t miss a bat. The win expectancy plummeted. Ballgame over.
Times change
Like many mangers, Hurdle has a concrete man for the eighth and ninth inning. This offseason the Pirates’ brass opted to bet on the upside of some of their relief prospects. Last night, boxed in by these two decisions, the Pittsburgh Pirates deployed a reliever with less than 30 career innings and 5.5 K/9 with one out, man on second, and their team now down a run.
The Pirates lost the game in a way that anybody who follows this team could have predicted. We should expect a few more loses like this while the young relievers find their footing. That is, until one of them proves they can consistently succeed in a high leverage spot. The front office has provided a bullpen that requires some creative use to be most effective.
Hurdle is a manager that has shown to be anything but creative with his bullpens in the past.
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