The Pirates dropped their second straight game after being shut down by another left-handed starter in a 4-1 loss to the Cardinals in the first game of a three-game set in St. Louis. The Pirates had no extra base hits and just one run against LHP Quinn Mathews and couldn’t hit a collection of mediocre relievers for the Cards. Jared Jones couldn’t make it five innings against as he struck out six in 4.2 innings and gave up three runs. Tyler and Doug recap this one on the NS9 Postgame Show powered by Primanti Bros. You can watch and listen here:

Here’s my 3 takeaways from this loss…

It’s Year 7 and the Pirates are Still Behind the Cardinals

With the 4-1 loss to the Cards Friday night, the Pirates fall to 65-71 and the Cardinals improve to 68-68, three games ahead of the Bucs. It’s Year 7 of the Ben Cherington regime and the Pirates are still chasing a Cardinals team that did next to nothing in the offseason and sold at the deadline. The Pirates arguably have more talent on their roster than the Cardinals, but it doesn’t matter because the Cards are still better than the Pirates and showed it again in the first game of this series. Jimmy Crooks comes out, who has a .326 slugging percentage and hitting .174, belts a two-run home run in the bottom of the 3rd inning. Then the Pirates make three errors which leads to an unearned run. Once again, they’re still not a fundamentally sound team and you aren’t going to win many games when you don’t hit and make three errors.

This Team is B-O-R-I-N-G

Even when this team was above .500 and won a couple games, they weren’t that fun. They weren’t that exciting. Even when they were hitting and in top 3 in runs scored, the bullpen would melt down and blow games or Paul Skenes struggled to right the ship and win a game for a couple months. And now when we finally have a bullpen, the offense not only regress but they have come crashing down especially against left-handed pitching to the point of being a lifeless and boring offense. And then pretty much all season the defense has been sloppy and horrendous. After three more errors on Friday, the Pirates 87 errors are second most in MLB.

In this game, they got shut down by a pitcher named Quinn Mathews, who’s a rookie with a 6.43 ERA coming into this game. After facing the Bucs, it’s down to 5.03. Oh and he got his first win of his MLB career with this win…woooo hooo good for him. It really does not matter the name or who it is on that mound, but if they throw the ball with their left hand, the Pirates are sunk before the game is started. The Pirates have 12 runs in seven games on this roadtrip. That’s 1.71 runs per game. That’s pathetic. To be honest, it’s kinda amazing they even won two games on this roadtrip with that kind of offense.

Where Are You at with Jared Jones?

I’m not sure what Jared Jones is at this point or what to do with him. He’s had some electric starts this season. He went from throwing four pitches mixing in his curve and changeup into his arsenal to have a handful of starts where he abandoned those pitches and threw nothing but the fastball/slider combo. It worked for a couple starts then he started getting hit around, probably because it was predictable when you’re only throwing two pitches and now he’s back to mixing the other ones in and hasn’t been effective in getting outs and going at least five innings. In this loss, he made it just 4.2 innings with seven hits, six strikeouts and three runs allowed.

In Don Kelly‘s postgame presser, he said Jones ran out of gas in the 5th…

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After a fairly good month of July, Jones has only gone five innings once in his five starts now in August. His ERA in August is an abysmal 7.40 ERA. He owned a 3.81 ERA after July and now his ERA drops to 4.83 ERA. The milk’s gone bad folks. I’m not sure if Jones is running out of gas on the season coming off of UCL surgery and long rehab or what. I’ve been steadily in the “Jones is a starter camp,” but after seeing these starts in August where he is struggling to go five, I’m not sure if he is or should be going into next season. Where are you at with Jared Jones at this point? Let me know in the comments and if you want to see Jones in the rotation next season.