The day after combining to score 22 runs, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago White Sox put up another 16 runs on Saturday evening.
It was a promising first inning for Vince Velasquez, who got through the inning on only 13 pitches with a single and one strikeout. With two outs in the bottom of the first, Andrew McCutchen doubled to right field, and then scored on a Carlos Santana single for an early 1-0 lead.
Velasquez quickly ran into trouble in the second, and almost got out of it after a double-play, but a RBI single would tie the game up at one. Things quickly unraveled come the third inning, when he couldn’t find the strike zone. The White Sox ended up scoring four runs in the evening and finished Velasquez’s evening with two outs in the third. Chase De Jong entered and collected the final out of the inning.
The Pirates closed the gap to 5-2 on a Bryan Reynolds sac-fly in the third, and the White Sox eventually got the run back in the fifth against De Jong who ended up pitching 2.2 innings himself.
Trying to make things interesting, the Pirates again closed the gap in the bottom of the fifth to 6-4, following a McCutchen sac-fly followed by another Santana RBI single.
The bullpen was holding the game intact until the seventh inning when it quickly got out of hand. Working into his second inning of the night, Rob Zastryzny struck out one of the four hitters he faced in the seventh, with the other three combining for three hits and a run scored. Duane Underwood Jr. entered the game to put the flames out with one out and runners on the corners, but instead he gave up singles to the first three batters he faced before getting the next two to ground out. The game was now 11-4.
Jose Hernandez would pitch the final two innings for the Pirates, and have a very strong showing. He threw 15 of 21 pitches for strikes, sitting down all six batters he faced to go with his two strikeouts. I’m not sure if it’s enough to move him into higher leverage situations yet, but it’s a step in the right direction.
To close the night out, being the gentleman he is, McCutchen gave fans one last thing to cheer about when he connected on his first home run of the season for the final score of 11-5.
Bullpens are going to have nights off, and it is a bit of a rag-tag group of relievers.
One interesting item I had noticed over the last two games; the Pirates haven’t been striking out much. It may just be happenstance, but Lucas Giolito and Mike Clevinger also aren’t run-of-the-mill starters. Friday evening, the Pirates only struck out eight times, with four of those unfortunately coming from Jack Suwinski. In Saturday’s game, the Pirates only struck out six total times in the game. Hopefully it’s a sign of hitter maturation with the younger kids.
