If you were hoping for more stellar pitching after Bubba Chandler‘s fantastic start last night, you were disappointed Sunday afternoon as Jared Jones was rocked for eight runs in an 11-1 stinker of a loss to the Mets to drop their sixth straight series loss. The offense was also stifled again by a left-handed starter as Sean Manaea went seven innings of one-run ball and an absurd 11 strikeouts. Jim and Doug recap this clunker in the NS9 Postgame Show powered by Primanti Bros and you can watch or listen here:
Here’s my 3 takeaways from this dud…
Jared Jones Only Throwing 2 Pitches Again Isn’t Going to Work
The big knock on Jared Jones as a starting pitcher was that he was primarily a two-pitch pitcher with his “F-U Fastball” and slider. And while those are two really good pitches, he needed to develop something else to throw if he was going to hang around as a MLB starter longterm. He came into this season off the UCL surgery and was throwing his changeup and curveball each about 12-15% of the time. Then sometime in June, he started featuring just the fastball and slider again almost exclusively. I figured he thought since he was on a 75-pitch count, he would just throw them more while it was working. And it was working for a while…well, not anymore. In Sunday’s loss where he gave up eight earned runs, Jones threw the 4-seam and slider 64 times and his changeup just four times and curveball. And he only threw the curve and change to left-handed hitters. It’s not working currently. The word is out that he’s only throwing these and teams are taking advantage. This was the reason why there was a push to add the changeup which we heard a lot about as Jones was coming back from injury.
Sure, the two pitches can carry him for some starts but it’s not a sustainable long term solution if he wants to stay in the rotation. Oh and the velocity on his four-seam fastball dropped about 1 mph per inning where he started out at 98.6 mph in the 1st inning and then finished at 95.7 in the 4th inning. Not very promising overall.
Offense Again Struggles Against a LHP
There’s not much more to say here. It really doesn’t matter who the starter is, if they throw the ball left handed, this Pirates lineup is cooked. Matthew Boyd, Kyle Harrison, Cristopher Sanchez or Sean freaking Manaea. It don’t matter. In this blowout loss, Manaea tossed seven innings, giving up one run on three hits and struck out ELEVEN batters. That’s pathetic. I keep saying it’s next to impossible for this team to get on a little bit of a run when our starter every day doesn’t given this team a quality start or even five to six innings. But they also can’t get on a run because they will eventually run up against a LHP and get shutdown. And they sure have been facing a ton of left-handed starters this season especially recently. They are literally beyond help against a southpaw. This is a problem that won’t get fix this season either. They ignored it at the deadline and now they have to lie there and take it. One of the offseason musts will be to pick up some hitters that mash lefties. But yeah, you can’t get shut down to Sean Manaea in 2026.
Mangum Giveth and Mangum Taketh Away
For about the 50th time this season, we saw the good and the bad of Jake Mangum in the same inning. In the top of the 3rd inning immediately after Luis Robert took Jared Jones deep for a two-run home run, Jared Young hit a line drive to center field where Mangum came running in. He dove for it, didn’t catch and the ball bounced behind him for a month of Sundays for a triple. Mangum’s defense can be maddening out there. If he just pulls up, it’s a lousy single and a single from Marcus Semien next up doesn’t score him but Mangum goes all out, all the time and completely misses it. He honestly probably should have caught it, I’m not sure how he missed it. Semien singles next and scores Young. In the bottom of the inning, Mangum belts his fourth home run of the season and the only run of the game for the Bucs. And he had another hit in this game for a 2-for-4 performance to improve his average to .303. He also went 3-for-5 in Saturday’s game. I don’t know what to say about Mangum at this point other than the fans continue to love and hate him at the same time.
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