Buccos Cove

The Pirates struggled throughout the 2020 season, but early-season injuries made the beginning of the year especially difficult. Today's Wednesday Playback looks at a positive as the Pirates got their first walk-off of the season against the Minnesota Twins on August 6th. The Pittsburgh Pirates finished 2020 with the worst record in Major League Baseball, so it is no surprise that the beginning of the season was a struggle. They were 2-10 through their first 12 games of the season and had already seen several key pieces head to the injured list including Nick Burdi, Keone Kela, and Joe Musgrove. The Pirates were looking for some positive twist to the early part of the season and it would come in the first Major League start of a young pitcher. JT Brubaker looked dominant in his MLB Debut coming out of the bullpen, but now he was making his first Major League start on the mound at PNC Park. To add even more excitement to the day, manager Derek Shelton was facing his form...

The Pittsburgh Pirates ushered in a new era of Pirates baseball when they hired manager Derek Shelton. It was seven months later when Shelton got his first professional win against the St. Louis Cardinals. After working as a coach in Major League Baseball for 15 seasons spanning four different organizations, Derek Shelton finally reached his goal of being a Big League manager in 2020. He was hired by the Pirates on November 27th, 2019, and was ready to hit the ground running. When he got the team into Spring Training, he wanted to establish a culture of fun, but with winning as the top priority. He had a group that many counted out at the beginning of the season, and he and the baseball operations staff wanted to get a good look at the talent they had. This meant moving some guys around and getting bench guys more playing time as they evaluated each player's value. Then, the baseball world was struck by the COVID-19 shutdown-ending Spring Training right then and there. ...

One of the new rules implemented for the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season was the two seven-inning games for Double Headers. The Pirates took advantage of this new rule in their first doubleheader of the season when they swept the St. Louis Cardinals on August 27th.  Early in the 2020 season, the Pittsburgh Pirates had a road trip in which they had to face the St. Louis Cardinals for three games and the Cincinnati Reds for four games. However, due to positive COVID-19 tests on both teams, only two of those games were played and the rest had to be made up. As a result, the Pirates would have to schedule a couple of doubleheaders later in the season to make up for the lost games. This meant implementing the new seven-inning doubleheader rule that was established for 2020. Rather than playing two nine-inning games, the teams would instead play two seven-inning games to keep players on the field for a shorter amount of time. The first time the Pirates would do this was on Aug...

The 2020 season was not the best for the Pittsburgh Pirates, but there were still several games that showed why we love the game of baseball. For today's Wednesday Playback, we look at the Pirates battling back to a walk-off win over the Chicago White Sox on September 8th, 2020. There were plenty of times during the 2020 season where the Pittsburgh Pirates were a tough team to watch. From bad pitching to bad offense, it could get frustrating watching the team struggle night in and night out to score runs and win ball games. However, there were some nights where the offense showed their true potential and battled back to get some big wins. One of those nights came on September 8th, 2020, when the Pirates were battling the American League Central-leading Chicago White Sox. The White Sox had been in a hard-fought battle with the Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Indians for the top spot in the division. Meanwhile, the Pirates were ushering in a younger era of Pirate baseball a...

While 2020 had its share of bad moments throughout the season, there were several good games where the Pirates showed a spark. Every Wednesday, we look back at one of those exciting games as we get ready for all the fun and excitement that the off-season can bring. For a majority of the 2020 season, the Pittsburgh Pirates starting rotation was subpar at best. By mid-September, the team only had one starting pitcher who had lasted seven innings in a game and the overall ERA was in the low fives. One of the pitchers struggling the most at that time was left-handed pitcher Steven Brault. He had allowed 12 earned runs over his last 14.2 innings of work. He started the year off by not allowing an earned run in any of his first five starts, but an outing on August 21st against the Chicago White Sox where he allowed four earned runs shot the left-handed's confidence down and started the drought of success. Not only was Brault struggling, but the team was struggling as well ent...