◆NEWSPirates Notes: Keller, Pitching Pursuits, Lineup◆ROSTERSigned free agent RHP Enmanuel Nunez to a minor league contract◆STATPaul Skenes ranks 4th in the NL in strikeouts (200)◆STATNick Gonzales ranks 4th in the NL in batting average (.303)
◆NEWSPirates Notes: Keller, Pitching Pursuits, Lineup◆ROSTERSigned free agent RHP Enmanuel Nunez to a minor league contract◆STATPaul Skenes ranks 4th in the NL in strikeouts (200)◆STATNick Gonzales ranks 4th in the NL in batting average (.303)
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.
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.
Comments· 4
The Debate
Is Jared Jones a long-term big-league starter, or is he headed for the bullpen?
lisamenfingerProspect· 80d ago
Ryan—always sugarcoating the situation! Hahaha 😂
BucsRaiseItAll-Star· 80d ago
dude, i’m so glad you called out his tweet. so insane.
Ryan🐣Prospect· 79d ago
You know it!
Ryan🐣Prospect· 79d ago
Yes, it needed to be said. I’m sick of these absurd tweets.
With Neil Lucas and Tyler Sweeney.
Chapters
Key takeaways
1
Jared Jones is far enough past his injury that the excuses have to stop. Until he can hold his velocity deep into games and get through the order three times, it's still an open question whether he's a big-league starter.
2
Jones should drop to 98 and throw strikes instead of chasing 101. He's not Jacob Misiorowski, and his fastball at 98 is still really good.
3
It's unthinkable that people wanted Oneil Cruz traded. Without the freak hand injury he was on track for a 30-homer, 40-steal season worth 4-5 wins.
4
Nick Gonzales shouldn't hit leadoff anymore, even against lefties. Move Jake Mangum to the top of the order for more speed.
5
Antwone Kelly has no shot at starting. He has an electric fastball, but the slider stinks, so his future is in the bullpen, and only if he develops a second pitch.
All right. What's going on, beautiful people? You're listening to the North Shore Nine podcast presented by FanDuel, and this is the NS9 postgame show powered by Permanente Brothers. I am Tyler. With me is Neil. Pirates lose four to three to the Los Angeles Dodgers. They dropped the first two of this series. Hopes are in the toilet.
Neil, is that correct? Are the Hopes legitimately just in the toilet now? If they weren't already? The Hopes have been in the toilet for a month at this rate, man. Like, this has just been a continuation of bad play that sank the season. Like, is the schedule in September easy? Sure. Does anyone think this team is going to do anything with it?
I certainly don't. they're at this point. They would have to basically not lose in September. Yeah. That's where they're at. It's a hole they've dug themselves in. The most frustrating part, I think, right now, Neil, is that these were two back to back, very winnable games against the Dodgers.
Probably two games you don't expect to really be in that much, or at least. I don't know. I expect to lose two out of three against this team. And at some point, you expect it to be ugly, I think.
With Bubba going, they're a little erratic and young. And we've seen some of that. But at the end of the day, these are two very winnable games that they have let slip through their fingers.
They could be sitting, what, two games under .500 right now? Instead, five games under.
How many times have we said that this year? That this was a winnable game, that they let slip through their fingertips? It feels like it's endless.
Like, we're on loss 40 of winnable game. And it's exhausting to talk about. Like, it's not the bullpen's fault anymore.
It's just, yeah, you're right. You didn't have any expectation going into this Dodgers series. But yesterday, you got you clawed back. You tied it. You had all the momentum.
And then you can't score runners in the corners and no out. And today, they get five early hits off Skubal. They score three early runs.
And after Jared Triolo hit his single in the second, the Pirates get one hit the rest of the game.
Just miserable stuff.
And on paper, coming into this one, the reason I had very little hope is because you see the guy across the diamond that took the mound for the Dodgers today.
Derek Skubal's out there. You're not expecting much. It's a lefty. It's well known the Pirates struggles against lefties this year.
He's one of the best pitchers in baseball, if not the best.
I had no expectations. But like you mentioned there, they're able to jump on him early.
And unfortunately, they just didn't do enough.
And they let him get settled in. And my God, he just diced them up once that second inning ended.
Yeah. And I'm not really all upset that Skubal diced them up afterward.
I think three runs off of a pitcher of that caliber is totally acceptable.
You got to do better than what they did, though, like against the bullpen, though.
And just one hit over the last seven innings of play, even against Skubal is I know it's not like a contradicting myself right now.
But like you got to you got to do a little better than that.
You got to please put a little pressure on him, get him out of the game or something.
And real quick, we got to shout out our guy, Michael B.
Thank you to him.
He says they are 63 and 68.
Seriously, it feels like any other of their past six seasons under Ben Cherington.
This organization needs a top to bottom house cleaning.
Ben Cherington has to go.
So does awful Don Kelly.
Pathetic.
Thank you to Michael B there.
Yeah, you talk there about three runs should be sufficient or at least I'd I typically wouldn't get that mad about, scrapping together three runs against this caliber of a pitcher.
But you mentioned that they weren't able to really get to him enough to get him out of the game.
And that was one of the major problems I saw with this thing.
From that third inning on, the at bats were just absolutely putrid.
They drove the pitch count up a decent bit early and then.
Just hacking at that point after that.
Yeah, I don't know what adjustment Skubal made, but clearly whatever it was worked like a charm.
And we had we had zero answers for anything he was throwing out.
like I said, I'm not really mad at the offense today, despite.
Not getting hits after the second inning.
I'm really more upset at just how the starting pitching.
And I'm sure I'm sure I'm wrecking your order of how you want to talk about this, doing this.
But like another day of going four innings from your starter and it just it derails any positive momentum that you built up.
Well, let's start there with Jared Jones, because I mentioned earlier about him and Bubba going to start this Dodgers series.
It's a good test for them, at least two young arms that this team's going to rely on for the future.
It's a test for sure.
It's a tough lineup.
You got to throw strikes.
That's step one of this test.
Throw strikes and give yourself a chance.
If Jared Jones today goes out there and just gets tagged around.
You know what?
They beat you.
I'm OK with that.
Would I probably complain about something?
Sure.
But at the very least, I could say you went after them.
They were just better than you today.
You want five guys.
You're not giving yourself a chance at all.
You didn't give the team a chance.
And yes, he gave up two runs in four innings.
But you're stressing the bullpen then because you can't get through an inning.
You give up the two runs.
You need to be better.
We're far enough along him being off the injury.
That it's got to start getting a little bit better.
He's got to be able to go deeper in the games.
The kid gloves are going to have to start coming off here.
It was not even kid gloves this time.
The guy just didn't have it tonight.
When he when he when he when he exited the fourth inning, there's not a manager in the world that lets him go out for a fifth.
it's like he saw what Bubba Chandler did last night and decided I could do worse.
like he barely threw 50 percent of his pitches for strikes.
And at first it was fine.
Like I first remember looking at my phone as I was looking at stats.
I was like, OK, well, he hasn't given up a hit yet, but he's walked three.
But, like who cares if no one can touch him?
And then, of course, people started.
And then he gave up those two runs and he had to leave the game after four innings.
Like you can't win too many games, especially against the Dodgers, when you can't have starting pitching go deep into games.
I really do think that he has like the talent to be an upper and MLB pitcher, but it just hasn't come together in a consistent way.
And tonight was unacceptable to play.
Like, again, if you want, I think I said this last night, but if you want to get back into this playoff race, there's no.
There's potential here that, it was a struggle, but there's potential.
It's you have to go win these games.
And Jared Jones did not do enough to help us win this game.
Yeah.
And when I when I talk about the kid gloves, you're absolutely right that they didn't really have those on today.
Necessarily.
But it's also the way we talk about Jared Jones and not just us, but the team as well, like making excuses for him because he's coming off the injury.
We're a good bit back here.
We need to start seeing you improve as a starting pitcher because I still have questions about this guy being a starting pitcher in Major League Baseball.
I agree with you that the stuff is absolutely there.
But until he shows that he can carry the velocity deeper in the game, until he shows that he can see an order three times through, there's going to be question marks.
And we're not seeing that growth so far coming off that injury.
Yeah, he's shown bits and pieces of it, I feel like there have been stretches where he's shown that.
But yeah, you do have a good point.
Like he was touching 101 pretty easily early on in this game, and he certainly wasn't into those third and fourth innings where he was really laboring.
And, I know pitch philosophy, velocity is a real hot topic, a real sore spot of Pirates fans.
But quite frankly, throw it 98 and throw it in the strike zone.
I don't need you throwing 101 if it's going to be this.
You know what?
Like, take, you're not Jacob Misiorowski, you're not that guy.
Take a little bit off and throw strikes.
His fastball at 98 is still really good, I promise.
Yeah, and 101 doesn't play whenever your catcher has to jump to catch it.
Yeah.
It doesn't matter if it's 101 when it's not a competitive pitch.
And the command was a major issue today, obviously.
You walk five guys.
And then that third and fourth inning where it started to really unravel for him, the command was just not good.
Just plain and simple, not good.
That attitude of, like, being aerated on the mound really doesn't go that far.
And that visibly showing your body language really doesn't lend yourself to much sympathy when you can't locate in the strike zone.
Like, I like it when he's on, but it's just going to seem like sometimes he's pouting that he's not.
The Pirates did have a 3-0 lead, though, because of that first inning magic.
And by magic, I just mean the return of Oneil Cruz.
I had a little bit of concern about his return and just how long it would take him to get back as Neal's.
It just goes just like the Pirates season.
Oh, my gosh, man.
What a...
That was a...
That just basically showed how the Pirates season has gone.
See ya.
Oh, my gosh.
But since returning off the IL, Oneil Cruz has looked good, I think.
frustrating, but...
Frustrating?
the swing and miss is a little bit bad right now.
Like, it's pretty bad right now, but he's still...
That's who he is.
I know, but he's still hitting at least, like, one ball 110 miles an hour a game.
Mm-hmm.
He's been great.
I don't know.
Like, he...
Again, like I said last night, he has game-changing skills.
And he's been doing it on a consistent basis.
And you just...
You gotta live with the strikeouts, because he's still special.
And you can just tell how much the Pirates have missed him in this lineup.
All...
The only, like, real enjoyment I've gotten out of the Pirates recently is thinking about what this team looks like if Griffin and Cruz aren't hurt for large parts of the season.
Yeah.
Yeah, losing Cruz for as long as they did.
You're exactly right.
You can see how much they missed him in this lineup.
The ability to lengthen it.
Having the guy that can change the game in a swing of a bat.
Like, there are not many people out there like him.
Mm-hmm.
And not to mention, I think he's played a pretty decent center field since coming back as well.
Yeah.
Nothing as impressive as last night tonight, I don't think.
Right.
But still, like, very serviceable.
And, like, and I'll repeat, I can't believe people wanted him traded.
It's unfathomable to me.
Yeah, that triple we hit in the first inning today was 114 miles an hour, I think.
I'm sorry, but he is the one who should have been traded.
I'm glad that Michael B. brought him up because speaking of the missed opportunities of today, another one came, I believe, there in the eighth inning.
Unfortunately, Bryan Reynolds has been like in a player, the pirate season.
Just really great stuff and positive plays and really fun baseball until their all-star break.
And then post all-star break, he's just taken it's taken the month off.
It's terrible.
It's a guy that I probably want up in that spot now at the same time in the month of August.
Before today, at least, he was slashing 233, 317 and 301.
So, as you said, it's mimicking the pirate season a little bit here.
But also, at the same time, I think that's partially because as Bryan Reynolds goes, this team also goes, at least, offensively, primarily.
And then, especially with the amount of guys that they had out, he was the one of the two or three sticks they had in this lineup.
And, yeah, he hasn't had a good second half of the year.
Yeah, I wonder if it's someone who really needs lineup protection.
But at the same time, it's like, I don't think there's that many bad hitters around him tonight.
you have Gonzalez and Valdez and Cruz just, like, around him.
That should be enough for him to, like, feel comfortable at the play.
But for whatever reason, he hasn't been on it for at least a month and a half.
If you said in August, I'm going to say that's – I'm going to say since the beginning of July and maybe a week into July, it's been unacceptable baseball from Brian.
So, since July 1st, 229-321-365 coming into the day.
Yeah.
It's unacceptable.
I'm sorry.
I know he doesn't make crazy money, but he makes a lot of money for the Pirates.
Yeah, I think he was hitting guys on Monday, too, I think.
I don't know.
I think earlier this week he was also having trouble with his command.
He couldn't throw strikes.
He gave up two or three runs.
Yeah, we're getting...
This later part of August has been bad Yohan, which makes sense because he was on an absurd tear of two months or whatever.
But again, it's just really untimely stuff.
Where the Pirates need guys to be at their best and we simply will not put it together as a team.
So it doesn't matter that Yohan was nails for two months because now he's losing us games when we need to win.
And it's not his fault.
I'm not trying to blame my call on him, but it's more just like this recent, this whole trend of inability to all play together well.
Right.
It just has not all three aspects have not come together for this team all year at the same time.
And also, Yohan's thrown 70 innings this year.
That's a lot.
That's a lot of innings.
And we are in August.
Last year he threw 64-ish.
And that's over the course of the year.
They've put in a lot of the workload on Yohan Ramirez and wondering.
we're probably starting to see some of that wear and tear on him.
And also, he's just Yohan Ramirez.
I hear you.
This is also just Yohan.
Yeah, he's also just Yohan.
But he hasn't thrown this many innings in a very long time, I don't think.
That's probably true.
Yeah, he's just been Mr. Mop-up guy.
And I feel like the Pirates not having good starting pitching all year just means that he has to come in the fifth, in the sixth inning, and bridge those two runs way more often than I think they ever thought they would have to.
Yeah.
Way more often.
Doval came in after that.
I thought he looked good.
But Kirby Yates continues to just get outs and not give up runs for the most part.
Those two have been nice additions.
Don't really have much to add on them.
Yeah.
They should be playing meaningful baseball.
I did want to just touch on Antwone Kelly because it feels like this is probably the first.
Is this the first scoreless inning he's had?
I got to be real.
I've not been tracking Antwone Kelly enough to know.
But I would believe you if the answer was yes.
To be fair, Antwone Kelly is usually coming in when the game is super out of reach.
Yeah.
His last outing, he did go three scoreless.
That's right.
That was also July 31st.
At any rate, we saw him up to, according to the TV, at 102.
I don't know if he did per the baseball savant or stat cast or anything.
But the fastball plays.
I don't know if anything else he has plays.
The slider, I think, stinks.
The change-up's a change-up, I guess.
And the sinker's a...
The sinker and change-up are almost the same pitch.
He's a guy that has an electric fastball.
I just don't know.
If you had starter hosts for Antwone Kelly, at least for me, those are gone.
Oh, yeah, zero shot.
I'm sorry, he's not a starter.
I have nothing to show me this guy's going to be able to make it as a starting major league pitcher.
In full agreement.
He could be a good reliever.
I still think you need a second pitch as a reliever.
clean house, fortunately, is the correct answer because you are pacing for another season of, what, 75, 76 wins?
Yeah.
It's the same garbage that you just have.
Again, it's disgusting how similar this has been to 2024.
Yeah.
It's almost identical.
Yeah, we've all wasted seven years of our lives on this project, and this is the end result.
And I know this isn't an S9 live, but, it's, the project's over.
It should be at least, especially when you're looking at game three of this series tomorrow, and we're in a FanDuel, you are plus 235 in, essentially, games that you 100% have to win.
You have to win 70% of your game's minimum until now, until the end of the season.
Probably more.
At this point, we're getting close to just, I need to see some development from some guys.
That's really all you're looking at now.
Like, we have hit the natural Pirates post-Altar game.
Yeah, let's start, let's start looking into next year.
But until then, we'll be back with you tomorrow to discuss it some more.
And again, the Pirates, according to FanDuel, plus 235.
So, they don't have much hope either.
But we'll be back with you tomorrow to talk about it.
Appreciate y'all for hanging out.
Peace out, Red Scouts.
All right, that wraps up this episode of North Shore Nine.
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Comments· 4
Is Jared Jones a long-term big-league starter, or is he headed for the bullpen?