PITTSBURGH — Francisco Liriano pitched four innings of two-hit baseball on Monday afternoon. He never got out of the fifth.
The Pirates’ most experienced pitcher allowed four straight batters to reach in the fifth inning, surrendering four runs in the frame and allowing the Los Angels Dodgers to escape PNC Park with a 5-4 victory, the only blemish against the Pirates in the four-game series.
The loss in of itself isn’t that hard to swallow. The Pirates finished their eight-game homestead at 4-4 after starting it a bleak 1-3 and got important contributions from rookies Chad Kuhl and Adam Frazier and stabilizing bullpen performances from A.J. Schugel and Juan Nicasio.
But the continued issues with Liriano — the erstwhile ace with Gerrit Cole on the shelf for a seemingly longer amount of time every day — cast emotions downward. The biggest of those issues is his control.
Liriano walked five Dodgers, including three free passes to leadoff hitter Kiki Hernandez, who came into the game sporting a .189 batting average. The third walk came back to haunt him, as Hernandez started the big fifth inning that unraveled Liriano.
Manager Clint Hurdle said that what he and Ray Searage saw from Liriano on Monday is a lot of the same things that they’ve seen from the last few starts.
“We’re still dealing with the same issue — overall command, the lack of consistency,” Hurdle said. “ It’s just repeating the delivery, making pitches. Sometimes, it’s challenging to pitch with confidence when you aren’t feeling what you’ve normally felt when you’ve had success.”
Liriano agreed and said that for whatever reason — whether it’s a lack of deception or perhaps some predictability — that he isn’t getting the same number of swings at his occasionally out-of-the-zone offerings.
“I’m missing my spots,” he said. “It’d be nice to put a pitch where I need to. I’m not getting as many swings as I used to get.”
That lack of swing-and-miss stuff has put an emphasis on Liriano’s fastball command, and it’s obvious that isn’t where he wants it to be.
“Pitching is about locating and command with the fastball and making pitches,” he said. “I’m not making pitches right now. I’m just walking a lot of guys and getting behind in the count a lot.”
There doesn’t appear to be a light at the end of the tunnel for Liriano. He isn’t injured and with another year on his contract, he would be a difficult piece to trade.
The only obvious way out of the situation is for Liriano to improve, and he certainly knows it.
“I’ve been watching a lot of videos and working in-between start,” he said. “I have to keep working on it and staying with the process. Hopefully we can get better.”
NOTES
• Juan Nicasio pitched for the second straight day for the first time since moving to the bullpen, and he responded by throwing three one-hit innings.
• The Pirates scored four runs in the first on a Starling Marte RBI single, a bases load Sean Rodriguez walk and a two-run single by Erik Kratz.
• The Pirates will fly to Seattle for a two-game set with the Mariners. Jonathon Niese will face Hisashi Iwakuma in the series opener.
