North Shore Nine

The Pirates lost both series this week to the Los Angeles Angels and the Chicago Cubs. It could have gone the other way as both series finales this week could have ended up as Pirate wins. The best part of the week was the highly anticipated debut of Paul Skenes. While the Pirates attempted to blow that as well the game ended up going into the win column.

In this weekly recap, we will look at each of the three major categories—Offense, Pitching, and Defense/Baserunning—and grade how the Pirates played.

Offense:
24 runs scored is much better than the last few weeks, though ten of those runs came in just one game. Oneil Cruz is the standout this week, far and above everyone else. He ended the week with 5 XBH a 1.000 slugging and a 1.471 OPS. Nothing sustainable obviously, but still a great surge that will hopefully spell a breakout for the rest of the month for him. Connor Joe continued to have an impressive season as well. Joe had 4 XBH this week and led the team in RBI for the week, accounting for 25% of them for the team. Yasmani Grandal had a solid week with the team, while only playing in four games he had a triple slash of .273/.333/.636 with a .969 OPS. Joey Bart and Edward Olivares were both solid this week in limited opportunities, both went 2/7 on the week. In the week ahead look for Andrew McCutchen to break out, he is just about there. Bryan Reynolds, Jared Triolo and Jack Suwinski need to get the bats going this week. Rowdy Tellez was 0-12 on the week with 5 strikeouts, sadly he will be on DFA watch moving forward.

Pitching:
Once again, this week the starters were effective. Martin Perez and Paul Skenes both had the bullpens fail them allowing two inherited runners to scores on each. Of course, leaving runners on base when you exit the game is their fault, but for them all to score in both games was unexpected. Quinn Preister had a bit of a rough start this week, but with the Pirates going to a 6-man rotation he will have a few opportunities to rebound. Mitch Keller was outstanding in his game, going the distance in the win. Jared Jones and Bailey Falter both had good games. The bullpen once again struggled to keep games in hand this week. Kyle Nicolas blew the Skenes debut with a HBB and then three straight 4 pitch walks to let 3 runs cross the plate. Hunter Stratton also had an off week, as did Josh Fleming. Though Fleming fell a bit into inherited runner issue after a two plus hour rain delay on Saturday. Roansy Contreras had a not great week either, both on the mound and then when he was DFAed for Skenes. Pirates need to get firing on all pitching cylinders moving forward the rotation cannot do all of the Yeomans work just to watch it fall apart once the call to the bullpen goes in. If they can’t, then some changes might start to get made.

Defense/Baserunning:
3 errors on the week, Cruz again with a throwing error, same for Priester, and Grandal with his first on a catch. There was also another near miss due to lack of communication in the Outfield between Joe and Suwinski. With Ke ‘Bryan Hayes out for an undetermined amount of time the defense wont look quite the same. However, with Jared Triolo on the team and able to play very good 3B the hot corner shouldn’t suffer much. However, this does mean more Nick Gonzales starts at 2B. This will be a make-or-break stretch for Gonzales and potentially his last chance to prove himself at the highest level of the game. The Pirates also managed to steal three bags this week, though there was a pick-off and a caught stealing to counter act most of it. Once again Pirates need to solidify the defense and really need to push boundaries on the basepaths to try to turn their fortunes around.

At 18-23, the Pirates are still only 3 games out of the Wild Card. However, their inability to win series is going to start to make that less and less of a hopeful number. If more of the offense starts to wake up from their slumber and if the pitching remains good. Then there is still a chance the season can be salvaged. However, at the quarter way mark, there is very little light at the end of the tunnel.