The Pirates jumped on Dodgers starter Tarik Skubal for three runs in the first inning, but gave up the next four runs and lost the game 4-3. It’s their second straight one-run loss to the Dodgers as the offense let Skubal get settled in after the first and could not push another run across home plate. Jared Jones started for the Bucs, gave up two runs in just four innings of work. Tyler and Neil broke this one down on the NS9 Postgame Show powered by Primanti Bros. You can watch and listen here:
Here’s my 3 takeaways from another frustrating loss…
The Season of Missed Opportunities
This 2026 season is going to go down to me as the season of miss opportunities as the Pirates continue to watch missed opportunity after missed opportunity all season. The Pirates had a five-game winning streak on April 5 of this season to improve to 6-3…and that was their longest winning streak of the season. They hovered around .500 all season and just couldn’t find that five game or more win streak again to get hot even for a brief period. If they go on a couple runs, who knows, they’re probably above .500 and right in the wildcard race if not leading it.
And the blown opportunities haven’t been just one part of the team. First, it was the bullpen for pretty much the entire first half. Pirates blew a lot of games where they had an 80% win probability and the bullpen would fall apart and lose those games. How about extra inning games? They’re just 5-9 in those games as they failed to play fundamentally sound in those extra innings and come through when they need a fly ball to score a run on a sac fly or just not be able to produce a clutch hit when it mattered in those games. And then like the offense in this game. They scored three right off the bat off Skubal and then disappeared and allowed Skubal to settle in and cruise to six innings and a quality start despite how it started. This was another game where you had the world champs on the ropes and couldn’t put them away. On Friday night Oneil Cruz ties it on a big two-run homer in the 8th and then we can’t get a run in with runners on the corners with no outs or bases loaded with one out. And yes you can argue that this is the defending champs and they come through in situations like that and the Pirates don’t, but it’s been a season full of missed chances not just against the Dodgers. The team is right there, man do they seem close but it’s just not this year with all the golden opportunities they’ve missed out on.
Some Folks Are Still Delusional About This Team
This was tweeted during the game, but my goodness can we stop with this?
Folks, there’s no run coming. It’s August 22, this team is incapable of taking advantage of a little momentum and going on a run. “Oh but if the starting pitching can just come around…” Basically four-out-of-five arms in our rotation struggle to get through five innings. What in the world have you seen in the four and a half months of the season that suddenly thinks the starting rotation is going to come around now? Half of them are about out of gas and our best pitcher in the world decided to tweak some things to become a more efficient pitcher and he made himself worse. That kind of shit isn’t getting fixed between starts. Others are at or nearly their innings max. There’s no run coming.
I’m tired of these ridiculous tweets…and it’s not just David Todd. There’s plenty of them out there trying to manifest some miracle run into existence to try and find a playoff spot still. Just see how this team does in the last month of baseball.
Just Keep Antwone Kelly Up and Start Him
Antwone Kelly, who’s been up and down a couple times this season, finally pitched in this game and tossed a scoreless inning. It was his first outing since August 12. At this point, he better stay up with the team and honestly, just start him at this point and see what you got. And while you’re at it, call up Wilber Dotel, Khristian Curtis and even Hunter Barco. Let’s see what some of these guys can do in a couple starts in the final month. Rosters will be expanding in September so you’ll have some room for a couple extra pitchers. I’d call some of the names from this group up, give others some rest and see if anything shows something that you could build off of in 2027. I’d rather see any of them over Carmen Mlodzinski at this point and another bullpen game of his. Or a Lake Bachar start that’s happening Sunday in the finale with the Dodgers. Forget that and let Dotel, Curtis, Kelly or Barco start down the stretch.
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