PITTSBURGH — The Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs, 6-5 on Wednesday night, in front of 16,904 people. Gift Ngoepe made his major league debut and recorded his first hit. Josh Bell hit a monster of a home run from the right side of the plate. Tony Watson survived another error in the ninth inning to record a four-out save and nail down the victory.
The only problem was that all of that happened after starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow had been removed from the game.
Glasnow lasted just 3.1 innings in what’s become a disturbing trend thus far in the season. In his four starts, he’s averaging 3.2 innings per start and has just once finished the fourth inning.
The results have improved, albeit slightly. After nine earned runs allowed in his first two starts, he’s allowed four in his last two and has cut his ERA from 27.00 in his disastrous season opener all the way down to 7.98.
Wednesday against the Cubs, Glasnow’s biggest issue was throwing strikes and commanding his pitches, particularly his fastball.
“It’s command,” manager Clint Hurdle said. “First-pitch strikes were under 50 percent and there was nine three-ball counts. There was only two hitters retired on three pitches or less and there’s four walks.”
Glasnow said that he feels a lot more comfortable on the mound as far as dealing with adversity and trusting his stuff at this level, and that showed by him navigating his way out of a pair of bases-loaded jams with just one run allowed. But he’s having trouble putting the ball where he wants to and he missed his spots far too often.
“It’s just strikes in general,” he said. “You can’t go 2-0 to everyone. You get early strikes and then get early contact. If I go out and throw 20 pitches, 30 pitches in an inning, bad things are going to happen. It just gives them more of an opportunity and it’s my biggest focus going forward.”
In between Glasnow’s short starts and a short outing by Chad Kuhl earlier in the homestand, the Pirates’ bullpen has been overloaded and has been carrying an extra man at the expense of the bench. Hurdle doesn’t seem interested in doing that for very long.
“We’re going to need more length,” Hurdle said. “We’re coming into a month where we have one off day after [Thursday]. We’re going to need more innings. We’re going to need some length.”
“I need to get deeper into game,” Glasnow said. “I’ve just been out of whack for a while. It’s going to take some time to get back, but I know I’ll get there. I’ll get to deep, efficient games.”
CRG SUCCESS
One of the other issues Glasnow has been working on has been controlling the running game — CRG for short — and on that front, he had some success.
Glasnow didn’t allow a stole base and had his first career caught stealing, teaming up with Francisco Cervelli to cut down Jason Heyward at second base in the third inning.
“That’s a part of his game he’s worked on,” Hurdle said. “That played out well. He’s incorporated a little bit more of a slide step or a quick step, whatever you want to call it.”
BELL SHOWS GROWTH
Josh Bell has been a work in progress at first base for quite some time, but it seems as if at least some of that work has been paying off. He doesn’t have an error in 119 inning at first base — the most on the team.
He’s also been checking off some of the awkward plays and throws that are one thing to practice, but a totally different animal with live batters and runners involved.
Bell experienced one of those in the fifth inning, when he fielded a hard ground ball from Kyle Schwarber and instead of taking the quick out at first, gunned a throw home to Francisco Cervelli, who tagged out slow-running pitcher Jon Lester to keep a run off the board.
“It may have very well swung the game in our favor,” Hurdle said. “However, that’s not a play that many first basemen are going to make, truth be told.”
It was a confident decision by Bell to go to home and it paid off for the team, but he admitted there was a fraction of an instant where he was unsure if he’d made the right play.
“The throw itself kind of had me holding my breath, but it had enough behind it to skip well,” Bell said of the one-hop throw to home. “Before the pitch, I was talking to Gift [Ngoepe] and said on a hard-hit ball, I was going home. It was premeditated. The ball was hit to me, I set my feet and I just fired.”
The play was complicated by Schwarber running straight down the line at Bell and the timing of Cervelli having to catch the ball and quickly turner to tag Lester, which are the parts of it that are just hard to replicate in a practice situation.
“That’s my first play like that being a first baseman,” he said. “That’s my first throw to home in general when I’m back. I’ve never had a play like that. I’ve seen it now. … It was an awesome experience to watch Cervy tag him out and I could do a little fist bump.”
GIFT SHINES IN DEBUT
Ngoepe went 1 for 3 in his major-league debut, and it was clear from the reactions of his teammates that it was a special night for all involved. Every player’s first game in the majors is special, but with Ngoepe spending eight years in the Pirates’ system and becoming the first African player in MLB, it was clearly something more than usual.
“Everybody was pulling for him,” Hurdle said. “Everybody was excited when Prince went down and told him to get ready for a double switch. The rest of it you can’t make up – involved in the plays he’s involved in. The base hit, the walk, three at-bats, in the middle of a double play to end the game. Just a lot of really cool stuff.”
“It was awesome, he’s such a good dude,” Glasnow said. “You guys know; you’ve talked to him. So it was incredible, especially seeing him get that hit. So excited for him.”
The hit coming off Jon Lester, a pitcher only a few months removed from a win in Game 5 of the World Series, had even more meaning.
“Knowing that [Lester has] been in the big leagues for a very long time and he’s a good pitcher and getting a hit off him, it was a pretty awesome feeling,” Ngoepe said.
