6/5/23- By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on Twitter
There are no givens in baseball. You can be the 1927 Yankees and still lose to the 103 loss Boston Red Sox 4 times. Heck, the Pirates last year proved any team can be any other team at any time when they swept the Dodgers in LA. Dodgers would win 111 wins on the year while the Pirates would lose 100.
Luckily, this wasn’t one of those times as Pirates hitters set a season high with walks and a critical late-inning caught stealing helped to set the stage for a Bucs victory.
Johan Oviedo has been extremely inconsistent this season as he has occasionally looked straight-up dominant and sometimes looked like he can’t get any pitches working for him. It was a mixed bag again for him tonight. He looked a bit wild early on, missing spots, walking 2, hitting 2 others. He managed to work through his recurring control issues with off-speed stuff and relied more heavily on his fastball.
Scoring started early after Austin Hedges committed his third catcher’s interference on the season, which allowed Oakland’s lead-off hitter and MLB’s leader in stolen bases, Esteury Ruiz, to reach first. Ruiz immediately stole 2nd and scored on a Ryan Noda single.
Oakland would add on in the 3rd inning following a leadoff walk to Noda and a hit by pitch to Brent Rooker, opened the door for their right fielder Seth Brown to hit an RBI double to center and catcher Carlos Perez followed with a sacrifice fly to right, making it 3-0 for the Athletics.
Southpaw JP Sears kept the Pirates in check for most of the game despite uncharacteristically poor control. He walked a career-high five batters in his 4.2 innings of work but held the Pirates hitless until the 5th inning when Bucs bats finally woke up. Second baseman Mark Mathias led off the inning with a first pitch single to left, stole 2nd and scored on a 2-out, 2-strike double by Connor Joe, which also drove in Andrew McCutchen from 1st.
The Athletics bullpen coming into this series were worst in all of MLB in ERA with 6.19 and they showed why once Sears left. Lucas Erceg managed to get the final out of the 5th inning but allowed Hayes to single leading off the 6th and was immediately pulled for Richard Lovelady. Lovelady struck out Ji-hwan Bae but walked Mathias and Hedges to load the bases before he was also removed for Shintaro Fujinami. Fujinami was throwing triple digits easily, however, he had no clue where they were going as he walked Cutch and Bryan Reynolds to tie the game at 3 before Jack Suwinski, batting for Connor Joe, hit a fly ball deep enough to right to score Hedges from third and giving the Bucs a 4-3 lead.
The score held until the 8th inning when Oviedo was lifted for left-handed reliever Rob Zastryzny – who walked Rooker and then, facing pinch-hitter Aledmys Diaz, surrendered a line drive double over the head of Reynolds which scored Rooker and tied the game once more. Zastryzny struggled with location as he also walked Shea Langeliers before being removed for Angel Perdomo. Perdomo hit the next batter with an 0-2 fastball in the elbow but managed to get a strikeout and lazy fly out with bases loaded to end the threat.
Bottom of the 8th had Bae reach base on an infield single to new shortstop Diaz and moved to third on a very hard single by Hedges to left. And then, with 1 out and the chance to put his team ahead, Cutch stepped up:
Colin Holderman would take closer duties for the night as David Bednar pitched each of the past three games and, while he ran into some trouble, was able to shut the door and seal his first career save and the Pirates 6th win in a row.
News & Notes
- Pirates hitters walked a season-high 10 times, including bases-loaded walks to Cutch and Reynolds in the 6th inning which tied the game at the time.
- On the Suwinski sacrifice fly in the 6th inning, right fielder Brown threw the ball to third instead of trying to nab Hedges at home. It is debatable whether or not he could have gotten Hedges if he had tried to make the play but Cutch played it smart and avoided getting tagged before Hedges scored the go-ahead run.
- Cutch had 3 walks, 2 RBI and zero hits on the night, a feat that has only been accomplished five times in Pirates history previously.
- A ninth inning caught stealing by Hedges of Ruiz was only the fifth CS for Hedges on the season (32 attempts) and just the 6th time Ruiz has been caught in 35 attempts.
- With the Brewers loss to the Reds and the Pirates win, the team is now back in first place and 0.5 games ahead in the standings for the division.
- Pirates look to keep things rolling with game 2 tomorrow night as Mitch Keller takes the mound. First pitch is at 7:05PM. Lets Go Bucs!
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