Final Score: Pirates 0 Phillies 6
Why the Pirates Lost: For the 2nd consecutive game the Phillies pitching shutdown the Pirate offense. This time it was Zack Wheeler who went 7 innings giving up 4 hits, walking 1, and striking out 8. It doesn’t help when you start Henry Davis and Jared Triolo both games. They went a cool 0 for 12 with 5 strikeouts. Davis is crushing it with a slash line of .141/.248/.239. This is one of the worst slash lines in all of baseball. The Pirates have not scored a run in 21 regular innings. They did score a run in the 10th in Fridays game with the help of a ghost runner. Paul Skenes seemed to be just a little off for the his 5+ innings of work. He finally walked a batter and had several 3 ball counts. It really did not matter since you can’t win when you don’t score.
Key Moments of the Game: The Phillies had nicked up Skenes for a couple of runs in the top of the 5th. Konnor Griffin made a great play at shortstop or the inning could have been worse. In the top of 6th the roof caved in. Bryce Harper led off the inning with a 400 foot home run. Alec Bohm singled and Brandon Marsh doubled. All 3 balls were hit over 100 MPH and Skenes was done for the day. Isaac Mattson came in, hit a batter and gave up a double to make the score 5- 0. Miraculously he got out of the inning with no more runs scoring, but you knew this game was over.
Next Game: Tomorrow night, Cardinals in St. Louis. The Pirates start a 6 game road trip going to St Louis and Toronto. This also starts a stretch where they play 12 consecutive days. This will throw the management team into another frenzy. I am not going to make any comment on what happened and why to the Pirates this weekend. It is pretty obvious what moves needs to be made. It is highly unlikely that the Pirates will make any of these moves but only time will tell. Tomorrow a golf blog.
The Goofy Game of Golf/Life Searching for the Answer 