The Pirates trailed twice early in this one, but the bats broke out and powered the Pirates to a 10-6 victory over the Astros in the opening game of their series in Houston. It’s the Pirates 4th straight win as they improve to 33-28. Oneil Cruz hit a massive 3-run home run in the top of 6th inning to give the Pirates the lead as they never looked back. Jake Mangum went 4-for-5 and Brandon Lowe and Endy Rodriguez both went deep in this win. Neil and Doug recapped this one on the NS9 Postgame Show powered by Primanti’s Bros.
Here’s my 3 takeaways from the opening game win in Houston…
Who Cares that Jake Mangum and Nicky G Don’t Have Much Power?
Jake Mangum and Nick Gonzales combined for seven hits Tuesday night…all singles. Gonzales is now hitting .312 with a .367 on-base percentage while Mangum is hitting .296 with a .358 OBP. Some folks on Twitter while whine that they don’t have enough (or any) power and they shouldn’t start or be on the team or whatever. I think that’s all absurd. Baseball today is all about OPS and power and I get that, but there’s this sentiment that if you hit .300 with no power, it’s not valuable. I disagree. This team has plenty of power already. When you have 5-6 regulars that can hit the ball out of the park with nice frequency, you can have a couple hitters that hit for average and get on base. It’s 100% valuable. Also, Mangum quietly has 10 steals now on the season after two in this game. Sure, Nick Gonzales was batting cleanup while Ryan O’Hearn was out which was a bit much and I didn’t agree with, but that likely won’t be happening now that O’Hearn is back. At any rate, this team needs and can absolutely use a Jake Mangum and Nick Gonzales.
Holy Wilber
Bubba Chandler started this game and labored to get through five innings and kept his team in it, but the story with the pitching again in my opinion was Wilber Dotel out of the bullpen again. Dotel took the ball and absolutely shut down the Astros lineup. He fired three shutout innings with no hits and struck out three. He walked two batters, but that was the only blemish on his pitching line and it didn’t matter because he didn’t give up a hit. His ERA is now down to 1.08. He wasn’t even pitching this well in Triple-A before getting the callup. It’s not happening this year, but I think Wilber Dotel is pitching himself into rotation talks for next season. He’s been fantastic and while it’s only been a couple appearances so far, he’s helped immensely with this struggling bullpen.
This is Not the Pirates Offense of the Past Decade
The Pirates went down 2-0 just two batters in this game and you’re thinking, “well here we go again.” But this is not your Pirates offense of the past 10 years! Endy Rodriguez hits a game-tying 2-run home run (please turn out to be good, Endy!). Then Oneil Cruz hits a game-changing 3-run homer that turned the game around and gave the Pirates the lead that they never gave up. Mangum had an RBI single and kept getting on base as I previously mentioned with Gonzales. And then Brandon Lowe belts a 3-run HR off the foul pole in right. Ten runs just like that. They’ve now scored 35 runs in the past four games during this little winning streak. Are we finally stacking wins? Let’s hope they get this going. And this 10 runs didn’t even involve Konnor Griffin as he hit the IL.
What Lowe is doing in incredible too, not only the best pickup for the Pirates this offseason, it’s looking like the best pickup across baseball. The Pirates came into this game as one of only five teams with 300+ runs on the season. With 10 runs in this win, they past the Yankees and are approaching the Dodgers, Braves and Nationals as the most runs scored on the year. That’s insanity from where this offense was just last year. The turnaround is wild, and this lineup doesn’t just look legit…it is legit.
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