The Pittsburgh Pirates are still waiting for a big hit. They dropped tonight’s game 2-0 to the Baltimore Orioles, while collecting only three hits.
Roansy Contreras started the game and was able to go seven innings while giving up the two earned runs. He gave up only five hits, but two of those left the park off the bats of Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson. Roansy walked only one batter, but also only struck out one. The Baltimore Orioles batters were getting the ball in the air often, as Contreras had six groundouts to fourteen flyouts.
Pirates offense didn’t have a lot of opportunities against Orioles starter Tyler Wells, and they weren’t able to come through when they got their chances, going 0-for-3 with RISP.
One of the bigger chances was in the seventh inning with two runners on and two outs. Miguel Andujar hit a long fly ball to right field. Orioles right fielder Anthony Santander tracked back, and made a jumping catch at the wall for the final out. If you didn’t see the play, this sounds like it was more of a difficult play than it was. Santander had more room than he thought, and likely didn’t need to jump.
Tucupita Marcano pinch-hit for Chris Owings in the eighth, and hit a one-out double. That didn’t amount to much with Jason Delay grounding out, moving Marcano to third, and then Ke’Bryan Hayes lining out.
Robert Stephenson sat down Baltimore in the bottom of the eighth on eleven pitches and one strikeout.
The once twelve games over .500 Bucs, are now only two games over. Mitch Keller toes the rubber on Sunday for the final game of the series. At this rate, the Pirates are going to need another scoreless nine innings, and maybe even more.
Raised in Cranberry Twp, PA, Jeff attended Kent State University and worked in Cleveland and Pittsburgh, before moving to New Orleans in September of 2012. His background is as an Engineering Designer, but he has always had a near unhealthy passion for Pittsburgh sports. Hockey and Baseball are his 1A and 1B, combined with his mathematical background, it's led to Jeff's desire in diving into analytics. Jeff is known as Bucs'N'Pucks in the comments, and began writing for Pirates Prospects in 2022 after contributing so many useful bits of information in the comment section.
I didn’t think it was good start for Roansy. O’s hit him hard and just missed several HR’s. Only 1 k in 7 innings. I think he was very lucky to only give up 2 earned runs. The good thing is his velo was up a tick or 2.
The bullpen has been a pleasant surprise this year. Still would like to see a mysterious placement on the injured list for Underwood, just so Sheldon doesn’t use him in high leverage situations. Be nice to see Shelby for a couple weeks.
I blame all this losing on that god-awful homerun jacket. The sword was enough.
Yeah get rid of the jacket, the bluejays already did that. Be original,(the sword) don’t need to see a hat, jacket, or anything else retread from another team. Create your own identity.
Jeff, I think you’re underselling the catch Santander made. It’s not on par with a young Griffey Jr going over the wall to steal a HR, but it was definitely closer to a 10 than a 0 on the difficulty scale. He timed his jump perfectly and snowconed the catch after colliding with the wall. In short, it was a game saving catch.
Yes, he needed to jump to catch the ball. He was fully extended and it was still a snow cone
Rodolfo Castro entered the season with 137 days of MLB Service. A couple of days in March, 30 in April, and 13 in May, and he earns his first year of MLB Service sitting the bench for the 5th game straight game (all losses) since hitting a game winning HR on May 8.
Another stellar performance by one of our young SP’s.
Last 13 games 1.38 runs scored. Letting any pirate catcher bat in the 8th inning one out guy on second down 2 is with cutch and Castro on the bench is a manager error.
If you filter FG by Pirates batters over the past 14 days, you’ll learn that if Shelton put out a starting nine of all 0.0 WAR replacement players, they’d have won one more game than what he’s actually put out there.