The Pirates faced Dodgers starter Blake Snell and had just two lousy singles in the entire game in a 4-0 shutout loss as the Dodgers swept the Pirates out of Los Angeles. The loss brings the Bucs to a season-worst six games under .500. Lake Bachar got the start and gave up one run in two innings and Carmen Mlodzinski followed it up with another stinker with 3 runs allowed in three innings. Cody and Doug recapped this dud on the NS9 Postgame Show powered by Primanti Bros. You can watch or listen here:
Here’s my 3 takeaways from this shit show…
Give Me Anyone Else to Start over Mlodzinski
I am done with Carmen Mlodzinski. He’s had about a dozen chances to start in the rotation and show if he can be a starter in this league and he’s failed every single time. They gave him an opener Sunday and it was the same ol’ results with a struggling, short outing. Khristian Curtis came up from Triple-A and pitched a clean three innings and looked better than Mlodzinski. Despite what some delusional fans on Twitter will tell you, this season is over. O-V-E-R. There’s 30 games left and I don’t want to see Mlod make one more start. Let’s give Curtis the next start in five days in St. Louis. And when rosters expand, let’s call up Wilber Dotel or Antwone Kelly or even Hunter Barco and let’s see them make some starts. With Skenes struggling and looking gas, Jones coming off an injury and Bubba and Braxton hitting their career innings max, I’d even say go a 6- or 7-man rotation and pitch the young guns and see if there’s anything there.
With this season cooked, I’m in evaluation mode at this point and want to see what Dotel, Curtis, Barco and Dotel can do given a real stretch to start some games. With 30 games, these guys could get at least four starts in and see how they do. We’ve already seen brief success from Dotel and Curtis at the MLB level this season, Kelly has been used sparingly and Barco has struggled when he’s been here but in two seasons he hasn’t made one start for this team. I know fans are down on Barco, but I’d rather see him make starts right now over Mlodzinski. Let’s change that and see. What the hell do we have to lose? Our reigning Cy Young winner can’t even go five innings at this point so skip a start and give it to someone else. And send Carmen back to the bullpen where he belongs.
Pirates and Dodgers Have Now Scored the Same Amount of Runs This Season
Isn’t that crazy to think about? After this 4-0 loss, the Pirates and Dodgers have each scored 653 runs this season. The lineup that features Freddie Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, Max Muncy, Mookie Betts, Teoscar Hernandez, Kyle Tucker, etc have the same amount of runs as your Pittsburgh Pirates this season. Shows you how different each team’s pitchers have been this season, huh? Same amount of runs and the Dodgers are 29 games above .500 and the Pirates are now six games under.
The Dodgers run differential is +151 and the Pirates are now +25. That’s a 126 difference of runs allowed between the two clubs. That’s a staggering difference. Just shows you what could have been if the Pirates pitching staff had been even close to what we were hoping they would be. Instead, the bullpen was a major problem for most of the season and now no one in the rotation not named Braxton Ashcraft can go five or six innings consistently.
Uncompetitive Lineup
The Pirates catch a lot of flak for the Sunday lineup nonsense, but this game really took the cake. Don Kelly sat both Oneil Cruz and Jake Mangum in this game as Billy Cook started in center field. Cruz just came back and had an off day Thursday and he’s hit lefties this season, why is he not playing in this game? This lineup saw Nick Yorke, Jared Triolo and Billy Cook in it and then we got Brandon Lowe and Spencer Horwitz against a lefty starter in Blake Snell. We’ve seen it all year, but it’s insane how bad this team is against left-handed pitching. But I’m not sure why you are sitting both Cruz and Mangum, two of your better hitters that are healthy right now. Cruz did pinch hit late and struck out.
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