How One Inning Perfectly Described the Pirates Season
Over the course of the Major League Baseball regular season, each team will lay at least 1,458 innings of baseball. Now, no one single inning is going to have an effect on the outcome of the season, but the Pittsburgh Pirates had one last night that certainly summed up how their season has gone. It was the top of the sixth inning, and the Pirates entered the inning trailing just 1-0 to Adam Wainwright and the St. Louis Cardinals. However, as they headed back to the dugout, they found themselves trailing 4-0, and being forced to battle from behind over the final three innings of the game. It resulted in the team's 73rd loss of the 2021 season and could be looked at as a metaphor for how the 2021 season is going.
It was Cody Ponce who was on the mound, and it looked like trouble early on as the Cardinals got two men on base. Then, Ponce battled to get a big out and it looked like he may escape the inning unscathed before everything fell apart and the Cardinals came through. For the Pirates, the start of the season was ugly as they got out to a 1-6 start through their first seven games. However, they battled back and had a strong April finishing the month over .500 at 12-11. It was a stretch that gave fans hope, but then everything fell apart. Since then, the team has gone 29-62 and has the third-worst record in all of baseball. Today, we look at the sixth inning of last night's game, and the similarities it has with the Pirates 2021 season.
Looking Like Disaster
When Cody Ponce entered the game in the top of the sixth, he was tasked with keeping the game close as the Pirates trailed by just a run. However, things did not go the way Ponce had envisioned it coming out of the bullpen. Nolan Arenado started the inning with a single, and after a flyout by Tyler O'Neill, Yadier Molina came to the plate. Molina took the first pitch for a strike and drove the next one down the right-field line for a double. Luckily for the Pirates, O'Neill stopped at third, but things weren't looking good as the Cardinals had two runners in scoring position with just one out. Harrison Bader was next to the plate, with an opportunity to blow the game open.
Similarly, things didn't look too good for the Pirates coming out of the gate as they struggled over their first seven games. They opened the season with series against the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds and started with a win on Opening Day. However, after that, they dropped their next six games and returned home with a record of 1-6. They were outscored 46-19 during that stretch and were held to three runs or less in all but two of those games. Now, coming into the season we knew the Pirates would be bad, but this made things look like they might even be worse than we thought. It was still early, and the Pirates had a chance to battle back, just like Ponce did when he was standing on the mound with two runners in scoring position and the game hanging in the balance.
The Big Break
With two in scoring position, Ponce needed a big second out, and he needed a strikeout in the worst way. Harrison Bader came to the plate, and luckily for Ponce was only hitting .130 against the Pirates this season. However, Ponce fell behind 3-0 and was in danger of walking the bases loaded with just one out. Then, the battle began as Ponce brought the count to 3-2 before Bader fouled off four straight pitches. Ponce then put a lot of trust in Michael Perez behind the plate and bounced a curveball that he got Bader to swing and miss at for the second out. It was a huge out for the right-hander, and now he had a shot to keep the Pirates in this one-run game.
After their horrible 1-6 start, the Pirates knew they had to battle back to keep this from becoming a washout season before it started. It wouldn't be easy, as the Cubs, San Diego Padres, and Milwaukee Brewers stood in the immediate future. However, one by one, the Pirates started taking care of business. They took the final two games of the three-game series against the Cubs and then shocked the Padres by splitting a four-game series at PNC Park. The Pirates would use that momentum to go 11-5 over their next 16 games and finished the month 12-11. They won or tied six straight series and had some people changing their tune. Could the Pirates be better than the experts think? Could they keep this hot streak going into May? These would all be questions that would be answered as the team gave a glimmer of hope that things might go right.
Just Couldn't Get it Done
After getting the big strikeout, it was time for Ponce to bounce back and finish the job with Paul De Jong coming to the plate. Ponce looked strong getting ahead 0-2, and it looked like he would have a clean inning. He had the right idea on 0-2, dropping a curveball out of the zone, but he kept the pitch too high and De Jong was able to flare it into right-centerfield to bring home the two runs and make it a 3-0 game. Ponce would intentionally walk the next batter, and looked to get out of the inning with Adam Wainwright coming to the plate with two outs. However, it wasn't meant to be as Wainwright deposited the second pitch of the at-bat into centerfield, bringing home another run and putting the game out of reach with the Cardinals leading 4-0.
After the Pirates got off to that 12-11 start, it looked like they might actually have a decent squad, not a winning team, but a decent team. As the calendar turned to May, they were set to face the Cubs and Padres, the two teams that started their streak of winning series. However, after splitting the first two games with San Diego, the Pirates dropped six of their next eight games and fell to 14-18. Things got worse from there, as they lost six games in a row in the middle of the month, and by the time May was over, the Pirates had gone just 8-20 during the month and were sitting at 20-31 by the end of the month. They added marks of 9-17 in June and 11-14 in July as they dropped further and further down the standings. They are now the third-worst team in baseball at 41-73 and to quote the famous Dennis Green "They are who we thought they were." Hopefully, the Pirates can turn things around in late August and September to keep the ship from sinking below 100 losses.
The Pittsburgh Pirates (41-73) look to wrap up the series with a win when they play the St. Louis Cardinals (57-56) at 12:35 pm. JT Brubaker (4-11, 4.95) takes the hill at PNC Park, where he has had success this season against former Pirate Wade Leblanc (0-2, 4.02) for the Cardinals. You can watch the game live on AT&T Sportsnet or listen on 100.1 FM and News Radio 1020.
Comments
Post a Comment