PITTSBURGH — The Pirates lost their fourth straight game Monday night, a 3-1 series-opening loss to the Houston Astros. After getting as close as one game out of the final Wild Card spot, the Pirates are now 3.5 games back and played one of their games in hand.
The Pirates’ best player was pitcher Jameson Taillon, who gave up two runs on four hits in eight innings for yet another gem. I drooled all over extensively covered Taillon’s successes the last time out, so I decided to focus on what has and hasn’t been working for the Pirates’ suddenly flat offense, which has four runs over its last three games.
POWER OUTAGE
Francisco Cervelli still doesn’t have a home run, 122 games into the season. Cervelli did miss a little over a month after having hamate surgery, but beyond the lack of long balls, he’s seen a power decrease across the board in 2016.
His isolated power (ISO) on the season is .044. That’s down from .106 in 2015 and .130 in 2014 with the New York Yankees.
One of the effects of hamate surgery can be a temporary loss of power in the weeks and months after returning to play. That doesn’t seem to be the issue, here, though. His ISO since returning in July has been .069, while before his injury this year it was .036.
I asked Clint Hurdle if there was something he’d noticed big-picture about Cervelli’s lack of power production.
“He didn’t come out of the chute with a lot of them last year,” Hurdle said. “He hit a couple to right field and then as the season went on, he hit a few. He’s not a home-run hitter. I believe more than anything, with the injury, he’s just trying to be a good hitter right now. That’ll all take care of itself down the road, but I don’t ever think he’s going to be a 20-home-run guy.”
“I’m not looking for home runs,” Cervelli echoed. “I’m just trying to keep it simple because of the injury. I just want to have good at-bats and hit the best I can for my team.”
There might be something to Cervelli’s newfound approach. Since coming back, he’s hitting .328 and has an .821 OPS.
“Yeah, I think that’s me,” he said. “My goal every day is to have good at-bats.”
That being said, he hasn’t given up on hitting home runs entirely.
“If they make a mistake, I can hit it,” he said. “It’s going to come. I know it’s there. One day, it’s going to come.”
110 CLUB
Gregory Polanco’s two-out double to right field in the fourth inning didn’t result in a run for the Pirates, but it effectively showcased the power that has led to Hurdle trusting him with the cleanup spot.
Polanco’s laser beam was struck at 110.6 mph off the bat and hit the Clemente Wall so fast that he had to hustle to get to second base. It was the fifth ball of the season hit at 110 mph or faster by Polanco.
“I hit it pretty good but that wall is too high,” Polanco said. “It’s 21 feet [high]. I’ll take doubles.”
He said that he hasn’t made a conscious effort to attempt to elevate balls over the wall, which is just 321 feet from home plate at the foul line — a tempting target for many left-handed hitters.
“I don’t think about it,” he said. “I just try to put a good swing on the ball. If you think about that a lot, you’re going to miss or hit fly balls.”
Polanco’s 2 for 4 night included a pair of two-baggers, and it was a nice breakout for the young right fielder, as he’s been struggling at the plate overall since his move to the No. 4 spot in the lineup. Hurdle doesn’t seem to think the change in order and the change in outcomes are related.
“There’s cycles to the season, when players hit and when they don’t hit,” he said. “He showed the ability tonight. The first game in [that spot], he hit a three-run homer. He’s going to hit. … I think over the volume of time, you’ll see [him] respond very well in that role.”
ADVANCED APPROACH
Josh Bell started for the second straight night and went 1 for 3 with an opposite-field double in the seventh inning. There aren’t many left-handed (Bell is a switch-hitter, but was hitting lefty against the right-handed Fister) power hitters that can also hit for power the other direction — especially rookies. I asked Bell what lead to his advanced approach.
“I think it’s just the Pirates’ mindset,” he said. “It’s a middle-away approach. You react inside and keep yourself from pulling off balls. As a switch-hitter, it works pretty well because I don’t have to worry about protecting against balls that start at me and then break back into the zone. When I’m at my best, I’m driving the ball to both gaps, but consistently to left field as well.”
Bell hopes that it will help him adjust to the majors by making it harder for pitchers to focus on one weak spot.
“Hopefully, I can continue to drive the ball to all fields, not just to right,” he said. “I’m sure it’s going to be a cat-and-mouse chase in the future when pitchers recognize that and try to work me inside. Then I’ll try to get them out of that approach and make them work away again. It’s that game you have to play.”
But the big story with Bell for the last month has been the status of his glove, not his bat. He made his first error with the Pirates when he misplayed a ground ball in the seventh inning. But Jameson Taillon wiped A.J. Reed off the base paths by getting the next batter, Teoscar Hernandez, to ground into a double play.
“I feel like it’s just about getting the same amount of work as I was getting [in Triple-A],” Bell said. “I’m just looking forward to getting positive work days in. I can scratch off the first error tonight, but I was fortunate enough to have Jameson get that double-play ball a couple pitches later in a crucial part of the game. I went from feeling pretty bad to feeling pretty good.”
TOO LATE TO TAKE IT BACK?
After signing a two-year, $11 million contract earlier in the day, David Freese went 1 for 3 with a walk. But after his ninth-inning single, he made a crucial base running mistake and the game ended after was thrown out trying to advance to second after a throwing error by Alex Bregman.
“You can’t be out there at second base,” Hurdle said. “You’re two runs down. That probably was some emotional base running. You get there, and it looks like it’s getting away. At the end of the day, we needed to get Bell the at-bat. The only way it works is if you’re safe.”
