The Pirates must have been tired of hearing about the fact that they had scored 4 or less runs during their current slide, as they put this discussion to rest by putting a 5 spot on the board in bottom of the first; capped off by an El Coffee bomb.
A few innings later Bryan Reynolds added a shot of his own and Ke’Bryan Hayes cleared the bases. At the time it looked Pittsburgh would run away with this one in a laugher.
Unfortunately the Pirates bullpen had other ideas. First the whiff rate king, Sam Howard hit his first real snag of the season; which made me go in my bunker to get a tin foil hat to protect me from the sticky stuff. Then came the wildness of Kyle Crick; causing the initial pages of the Manfred Manifesto to come following from my already warped mind. Finally, Richard Rodriguez took the mound; getting the save for the closer than needed 11 to 10 victory, but calling into question the effects of the substance that existed on his glove all year up until last night.
News and Notes
- I hate that this is the stuff I have been made to think about, notice or question while watching a baseball game.
- Chad Kuhl looked calm and collected, thus efficient. Through 6 full innings and 77 pitches Kuhl struck out out 4, walked 1 and allowed 1 earned run on 4 hits.
- Young Hayes is good at baseball. He has cooled off obviously, because the original pace he had set was that of the greatest player of all time. The kid doesn’t really strike out, makes good contact and gives the Pirates a chance in every game he plays in; or at least give us hope for the future.
- Bryan Reynolds is also good at baseball. Hitting his 11th home run on the season, has him only 5 off of his “career” high. Currently on pace for 27, this is honestly more power that I ever expected from the young switch hitter.
- I am done with Tom. No offense to Ka’ai, but I am truly done watching him struggle at the plate. Bring up Alford, call up Olivia, give Bligh Madris a shot or let’s see what Chris Sharpe can do. Any of this would be better than what I am watching right now.
In about an hour the Pirates and Cleveland Baseball Team will be back at it.
Will Crowe (0-4, 6.75 ERA) remains in the rotation, to take on Cal Quantrill (0-2, 3.11 ERA); with Crowe still looking for his first big league win.
Inside The Bucs Basement 
I guess my question with Alford is how many PAs constitute “enough” to translate to a .700s OPS in MLB. He’s currently at 117 PAs this AAA season, according to MiLB.com. Is it reasonable to expect his unsustainable .457 BAbip in AAA to merely regress to an MLB-typical ~.290 (ideally better than .300, we hope)? I’m not sure there’s a way to definitively determine this one way or another, apart from recalling him.
More interesting to me: Not that they are on precisely the same plane, but we’ve seen 140 more (which doubles Tom’s PAs with the club) PAs from Kevin Newman this season. He’s almost 10 months older than Tom. Tom has slightly better slugging than Newman and far superior on-base percentage. Polanco and Gonzalez have much better offensive numbers–and I don’t think anyone’s saying the Bucs would be ill-advised to part with those two in the next few months. Same goes for Cole Tucker in many people’s minds–and he’s THREE YEARS YOUNGER than Newman.
So I have no problem being done with Tom, Polanco, Gonzalez, and maybe even Tucker, but I think it’s disingenuous to be done with all of them and not Newman too.
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