In our daily Wake-Up Call, we get you ready for the day with a complete look at all things Pittsburgh Pirates
The Pittsburgh Pirates lost their first series of the year, dropping two of three to the presumed-rebuilding Cincinnati Reds. To be sure, the Reds’ lack of pitching will not sustain them for the long haul, and it’s easy to believe that the proceedings will be very different when these two teams meet again.
After the high of sweeping the Cardinals, it’s almost as if this result should not have been a surprise. Gerrit Cole and Jeff Locke were to make their season debuts, bringing about some hand-wringing from Pirates fans albeit for entirely different reasons. Cole’s “rustiness” showed, as he needed 100 pitches to get through just 4.2 innings. On the other hand, Locke was efficient enough to give the team six innings of one-run ball.
If I removed the names from the last paragraph and asked you which pitcher would correspond to each start, your answer likely would have been very different from what actually happened.
LOB City
By far, the headlines for this team are dominated by the sheer amount of runners left on base in the series. The team left a total of 34 runners on base over the three-game series, with 14 of those coming in the finale. The Pittsburgh Pirates’ new on-base centric approach is working, but it is all for naught if the team cannot bring those runners home.
During yesterday’s game in particular, there were several glaring instances of Pirates batters pressing once runners were in scoring position. Andrew McCutchen had some outs that came early in at-bats, and Josh Harrison in particular put some questionable pitches into play.
For this new approach to work, it can’t go out the door as soon as there are runners to bring home. Perhaps McCutchen, Harrison and others saw something they liked early in these at-bats. The Pirates were a good hitting team against first pitches last year, so this may be a Vulcan mind meld of two philosophies coming together.
Baseball links on the web
Here’s your daily look at all things baseball with some great baseball writing.
- Heralded prospect Nomar Mazara, the top prospect in the Texas Rangers’ system, made his debut over the weekend. MLB Trade Rumors was all over it.
- HardBall Talk tells us that Barry Bonds doesn’t think Bryce Harper is doing a very good Barry Bonds impression.
- Our friends Jays From The Couch are trying to throw proverbial water on the Joey Bautista-to-Boston scenario.
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