Pirates Morning Report: Their Luck Runs Out

Final Score: Pirates 5 Yankees 7

Why The Pirates Lost: A disastrous 9th inning where the Yankees scored 4 runs thanks to some horrible pitching and fielding by the Pirates. Up until the 9th the game had gone the Pirates way thanks to a less than stellar outing by Gerrit Cole. Johan Oviedo was able to basically survive one of his typical ridiculous outings. Oviedo gave up only 1 run, on 4 hits, 5 walks, striking out 7 in 5 excruciatingly slow painful innings. For the 2nd time in 3 games the opposing pitcher got hit in the head with a ball. This time off the bat of Ji Hwan Bae that went off pitcher Anthony Misiewicz’s head out into right field, to tie the game at 3-3. Later in the inning Ke’Bryan Hayes got a low hop single to drive in 2 runs to give the Pirates a 5-3. It looked like at that time the breaks were continuing to go the Pirates way and the 4th win in a row was about to happen. Colin Holderman came in to pitch the 9th inning.

Key Moment Of The Game: Simply put, Holderman was horrible. He showed everybody how not to pitch. He threw 4 straight sinkers to D J LeMahieu. The 4th one on a 1-2 count was ripped into right field for a single. He throws a 5th sinker to Aaron Judge, a sweeper not close to the plate, then a sinker that gets ripped to left field for a single. He walks Gleyber Torres on 5 pitches, 3 of them being sweepers that don’t come close to the plate. He does get Stanton to pop up for the 1st out. Next, he walks in a run after getting ahead of Estevan Florial and his .167 batting average 0 and 2. The score is now 5-4. Despite all that, the inning would have been over on a double play, if anybody on the Pirates realized that Bae cannot play second base. He threw the ball into the dirt that got by Alfonso Rivas and the Yankees had the lead 6-5. Rivas should have made sure the ball did not get by him, but as it turned out it probably would not have made a difference, since Holderman got lit up for 2 more singles and the runs would have scored anyway. Holderman pitched 1 inning giving up 4 runs, 4 hits, and 2 walks. Mercifully the Pirates went down quickly in 9th to bring the game to a close at the 3-hour 15-minute mark.

Next Game: Tonight, Yankees in Pittsburgh. We will see if the Pirates can bounce back from such a disastrous game. In order to have that 5-2 homestand they will need to win the last 2 games of the series. It has been a while since the Pirates blew a game like this, but they kept flirting with it, and this time they fell to defeat.