The Pirates got some very good pitching and beat Toronto, 7-2, at LECOM Park. Their spring record is now 3-6-2.
After spending the first week and a half of the spring making anemic contact, the Pirates’ hitters actually hit a lot of balls hard in this one, only to spend six innings watching nearly everything get caught. Ironically, the game broke open late because the Jays’ outfielders couldn’t catch fly balls.
For the first six innings, the Pirates’ offense was an infield hit by Andrew McCutchen — his first hit of the spring — followed by an opposite field home run by Carlos Santana. The only other hit was a single by Jack Suwinski following the home run, and Suwinski got thrown out trying to stretch it into a double. (It took a good play by the left fielder and was very close, so it was a good decision on Suwinski’s part.)
Other than that, there were a lot of bullets, including a couple each by Bryan Reynolds and Ji-Hwan Bae, with little result. Speaking of which, in the daily positional bingo game, Reynolds moved back to center, with Suwinski in left. Bae played short, Rodolfo Castro second and Jared Triolo third.
Once everybody’s subs were in the game, the Pirates got the lead on a dropped fly ball in the seventh. They got three more from another flub in the eighth, after Lolo Sanchez opened the inning with a dinger to left.
Mitch Keller started and had a strong outing. There were a lot of backups in the Jays’ lineup, but still . . . . Three innings, no walks, three hits and no runs. Two of the hits weren’t even his fault. One was a shallow fly to left that Suwinski lost in the sun. Another was an infield hit on which Bae made a great diving stop but couldn’t get the throw to first. Keller took care of that by eventually picking the runner off second. Keller went heavily with sinkers and fastballs, and lots of cutters, rarely going with his curve and throwing just a few changeups and pitches gameday considers “sweepers.”
Chase De Jong followed with a seven-pitch inning, all strikes, which should earn him some sort of special commendation.
The most interesting part came from prospects. Carmen Mlodzinski had an impressive, eight-pitch inning, mostly fastballs, 95-97 mph, six strikes. He briefly showed a very good cutter. Mlodzinski throws from a very low angle. Well . . . it’s not so much the arm angle, which is about three-quarters, but he drops down very low and drives forward, which exaggerates the three-quarter angle. If his showing so far this spring holds up, he could be an option sooner rather than later.
Cody Bolton also had a good inning, needing ten pitches, eight strikes. He mixed a fastball, 93-95 mph, sinker and slider.
Mike Burrows had the only tough inning, but the defense could have helped more. He had two outs and one on when Reynolds lost a fly ball in the sun and it dropped for a gift RBI triple. The next batter grounded one up the middle and Bae made another great diving stop, but lofted the throw into no-man’s land. The two plays were illustrations of how he may not have the arm for short. He did successfully make one very good play, charging in on a slow bouncer. Of course, that was a much shorter throw.
The other two innings went to Tyler Chatwood and lefty Daniel Zamora. Chatwood didn’t throw a lot of strikes, but had a 1-2-3 inning anyway. Zamora did throw strikes. He also threw sliders — nine out of 11 pitches — for his own 1-2-3 inning.
