The Pirates fall back down to .500 yet again as Christopher Sánchez continues to destroy this lineup this year. The Bucs could not follow up on their big win yesterday and get blanked 8-0 by the Phillies tonight. The struggles against lefty pitching continues and the Pirates’ arms got hit repeatedly by the elite Phillies offense and now the Pirates must recover to avoid dropping under a winning record yet again. Watch Jim and Tyler break down tonight’s game here:

The Offense Must Figure Out Their Lefty Problem

The Pirates’ offense has been elite so far this year in almost every metric. They score over 5 runs a game; they can score tons of runs on a daily basis; and they are extremely fun to watch. If the Pirates make the playoffs, it’ll be off the back of their lineup. That being said, if Buctober ends up happening, this team might have an Achilles heel. The team simply struggles to hit left-handed pitching, and that was on full display today. Christopher Sánchez is a top 5 pitcher in baseball, so getting blanked isn’t super surprising. He generated 23 whiffs, struck out 9, and went a full 7 innings while barely breaking a sweat. The Pirates heard me say they didn’t get shut out all of June, and on the last game they finally got shut down completely. In a 3-game series, teams can simply throw all their lefty arms at the Bucs, and they seem to struggle with this mightily. O’Hearn, Horwitz, and Lowe being lefties and being some of our better hitters means the middle of the order is below average against these arms. The Pirates need a right-handed bat who can replace Ozuna and give the team a real threat against lefties.

The Brandan Bidois Experiment Needs to Be Over For Now

The game was over before Brandan Bidois entered the game, but he is clearly overmatched at the MLB level. Despite being a metrics and analytics darling, he simply does not have the command to effectively use his pitches and get batters out. There is a world where, in the near future, he is a major piece of a contender’s bullpen, but right now his ERA is over 6. He cannot make it through an outing without giving up a run, as punctuated by tonight, when he gave up 4 runs in fewer than 1 inning of work. It is time to send him to AAA to work out the kinks in his toolset. He is an extremely talented arm, and I genuinely believe he has the stuff to be a closer for a good MLB team. Right now, he is hurting the team, and we need to be finding other options to take his spot.

Marcell Ozuna Please Retire

What an absolute joke of a player Marcell Ozuna is. His big season accomplishment was to raise his OPS over .600 and hit left-handed pitching marginally well. He didn’t muster a single hit tonight, as he’s allowed to be a black hole in the middle of the lineup. He is such a disaster he makes one yearn for cleanup hitter Nick Gonzales. I am tired of watching him flail around like he’s never swung a bat before. Get him off this team and let someone who actually cares get his at-bats. He tries to talk trash to Christopher Sánchez before the first series and has promptly gotten destroyed repeatedly, as if he wants to be humiliated. He is taking the crown for worst player of the Cherington era, which shouldn’t even be possible when you look at the rosters from 2020 to 2025.