Our Takeaways from the Pirates Throwing a Win Away

The Pirates took a 3-2 lead into the bottom of the 8th inning after Paul Skenes exited with seven strong innings and Don Kelly watched Gregory Soto throw the game away in a meltdown where the Cubs scored too to steal a 4-3 win. The Pirates only offense was on one swing as Ryan O’Hearn belted a three-run blast in his first start back for his 18th home run of the season. Tyler and Doug recapped this one on the NS9 Postgame Show powered by Primanti Bros. You can watch or listen here…

Here’s my 3 takeaways from this blown loss…

I’m Out on Don Kelly

I’ve had it with Don Kelly and his lack of urgency. With the Pirates leading 3-2 in the 8th inning, Don Kelly removed Paul Skenes after seven strong innings of efficient pitching where Skenes gave up just two solo home runs in seven innings of work and was at 82 pitches. When I saw Kelly gives Skenes a man hug after his 7th (a clear sign that his day was done), I thought okay Kelly will go to Weaver and Montgomery to cover the last two innings to close the game out. Only Kelly went to Gregory Soto for the 8th. It was a curious decision at the time, but okay Weaver hasn’t been pitching great either lately so if you want to go with Soto with PCA coming up for the lefty lefty matchup, so be it. But Kelly watched Soto melt down and he sat there, not warming up Weaver or Montgomery for any type of four-out save situation.

Soto immediately gave up a leadoff double then got a flyout and a huge strikeout of Pete Crow-Armstrong. It went downhill from there. Soto hit Alex Bregman with a wild pitch that hit him in the foot. Then he walked pinch-hitter Seiya Suzuki to load the bases. The Cubs pinch-hit Matt Shaw. Kelly decided to stay with Soto…he didn’t even warm anyone up at this point. Soto walked Shaw to tie the game. Kelly continued to stay with him. Then Soto hit Nico Hoerner with the pitch to give the Cubs the 4-3 lead and the ball game. Soto then struck out Michael Conforto for the final out. Damage was done. The only hit Soto allowed was the leadoff double, but his walks and HBP did him in.

My main question after watching that go down was is Weaver and Montgomery unavailable for some reason? I post the NS9 Bullpen Breakdown each day on our Discord and social media and with both not pitching yesterday, they typically would have been available since they didn’t throw three straight days after resting during yesterday’s blowout loss.

So if you pitch Weaver or Montgomery in this game then one of them would be unavailable Sunday after pitching 3/4 days, but you don’t know what Sunday’s game will bring. You could be down 10-0 or up 10-0 and not need either, but you 100% needed them in this game. Instead, Kelly decided to watch Soto hand the game away. I couldn’t wait to hear what Kelly would say in the presser and it confuses me even more…

So he went to Soto because of the PCA at-bat for the lefty vs lefty. Okay, I can get behind that. It worked out for that at-bat, but then he started melting down and Kelly didn’t even have anyone warming. And in his next question of if he thought about bringing in Yohan or Weaver after the PCA at-bat, Kelly replied “No. We had gotten Yohan up, in case he got out of it, but Suzuki was 0-4 with 3 strikeouts and Shaw 0-2 with a strikeout and Soto has been really good against RH batters too.” I’m not sure I would say Soto has been really good against righties lately. He’s been better, but he also hasn’t been pitching in high leverage situations like this inning was with a lead. But he answered my next question in that quote. I wanted to know who he was planning to pitch in the 9th and apparently it was Ramirez. Why in the world would it be Yohan Ramirez? Why would’t it be Mason Montgomery for the 9th? Now, Montgomery did start warming up while the Pirates were batting in the 9th, so why in the hell wouldn’t you have brought Montgomery in for the 4-out save?

Kelly did admit that “in hindsight, he should’ve had Weaver up and to come in.” How does he not have him warming in case Soto struggles? How many times has Kelly seen Soto blow games this season not to be ready for all scenarios? Kelly just hasn’t had much feel for the relievers when they start to struggle and he always seems to be a step behind on what the right move is.

And then the question about could Skenes have gone more than 7 innings. Oh, he hasn’t gone seven innings since mid-May Kelly said. Wrong. He had a 7-inning start in July after the All-Star break but who cares? He was efficient and pitching well. Kelly said Skenes hasn’t been over 92 pitches and has been dealing with some stuff in the second half. Wrong again, he’s pitched 92+ pitches five times in the second half. He’s pitched into the 100’s three consecutive starts at the end of July. It’s Paul Skenes, this isn’t some rookie up there you’re looking to limit. The dude won the NL Cy Young last season…what are we doing here? Just roll with your horse.

I understand when pitchers don’t perform when they’re called upon it makes a manager look bad when not always their fault, but my goodness could we manage a game from time to time with a little bit of urgency? If you want to start the 8th with Soto for the PCA at-bat, great but Weaver or Montgomery has to be warming at the same time. It was awful managing and then he even second guesses himself in the presser. I’m not a huge “manager makes a big difference” kind of guy, but I’m out on Kelly at this point. I don’t think he’s the guy for the job.

Fitting Loss

It’s fitting that when the Pirates were playing well, starting to get hot and trying to keep their bleak playoff hopes alive, they would lose a game in a crushing way with the bullpen melting down. Just one more bullpen blown game for good measure to effectively end their season.

Since the bullpen additions at the deadline and the emergence of Mason Montgomery as a top flight closer, this bullpen was pitching well and certainly weren’t the problem the past couple months. But with the team needing wins and clinging to a 3-2 lead in this one, it’s fitting that the bullpen would blow another one and handing the Bucs another back-breaking loss. It ruined Skenes good start and it ruined Ryan O’Hearn’s big three-run home run. Now the Pirates fall back to 74-75, one game under .500 and 6.5 games out of the last wildcard spot with 13 games to go.

O’How We Missed O’Hearn

With the Pirates down 2-0 and looking like another game where the offense comes up short, Ryan O’Hearn strolled to the plate with two on base and clubbed a three-run home run into the right-field seats at Wrigley Field. The Pirates 2-0 deficit suddenly turned into a 3-2 lead with one swing of the bat. That’s what we’ve missed most with O’Hearn being on the IL since July 31. That game-changing power that can turn the game on a dime. The Pirates were leaving guys on base and not getting that big hit until O’Hearn’s blast in the 6th inning. Saturday’s game was the first in a while that the Pirates had Oneil Cruz, Konnor Griffin, Ryan O’Hearn, Spencer Horwitz, Brandon Lowe and Bryan Reynolds all in the lineup together for quite some time. They really should have scored more than three runs and hopefully these six will help score a bucket of runs each game to finish this season. O’Hearn’s home run should have been the game winner, but the Soto meltdown spoiled the welcome back party.