Pittsburgh Pirates Takeaways & Throwaways – The Sounds of Silenced Bats

The Pittsburgh Pirates tried to shake off their terrible sweep by the Marlins tonight, but it wasn’t in the stars.

The Pittsburgh Pirates, who seemed to have turned a corner last week, dropped the first of a three-game series against the Houston Astros by a score of 3-1.

Takeaways

• Resiliency – Jameson Taillon pretty much fell apart in the fifth inning (see throwaways), but walked out to the mound in the sixth and sat the side down in eight pitches. He stayed in the game and pitched three more solid innings, spelling the bullpen for the night.
• Paul Simon, attending the game tonight as part of a family tour of all 30 baseball parks, gave a shout-out to Josh Harrison and Francisco Cervelli.

Throwaways

• Taillon’s fifth inning – the rookie was cruising through the first four innings, and carried a perfect game through three before Jose Altuve got a single off him with two outs in the fourth. But in the fifth the wheels came off. First Taillon walked A.J. Reed, who advanced to second on a passed ball. Then he gave up a two-run homer to Teoscar Hernandez followed by a double by Jason Castro and a single by Jake Marisnick before finally getting out of the inning on a grounder by George Springer.
• The Pirates bats – might as well be thrown away because they haven’t been doing the players any good of late.
• Rookie nerves – Josh Bell started in his second MLB game tonight. Yesterday he caused two errors charged to his teammates and tonight he wracked up one of his own. It’s understandable that there are some nerves to contend with right now, but that excuse isn’t going to work forever. Let’s hope he gets a little tighter over there at first.

W – Doug Fister (12-8)
L – Jameson Taillon (3-3)
S – Ken Giles (4)

Line of the Night

One pitch was all it took to get the Astros on the board. Otherwise, Jameson Taillon was dealing. In eight innings he gave up four hits, two runs, walked one, and struck out eight.

Player of the Game

Hop on over to our twitter feed to cast your vote for tonight’s Player Of The Game!

Offense doesn't show up for #Pirates in 3-1 loss to #Astros. Who was your Player of the Game tonight?

— Jason Rollison (@jrollisonpgh) August 23, 2016

Next Up

Righty Ivan Nova takes the bump for the Bucs against the Astros’ Joe Musgrove in the second game of this three-game series tomorrow at 7:05 pm.