Final Score: Pirates 4 Mets 6
Why The Pirates Lost: Carmen Mlodzinski moved back to the rotation last night. Mlodzinski, out of the bullpen, has an ERA of 2.29. His ERA as a starter is 4.30. Twice he followed up an opener; in those situations, he pitched 11 innings and gave up 2 runs on 6 hits. The Pirates do not have much of a choice but to use him as a starter due to the injury to Mitch Keller. The fact remains, when he starts a ballgame, he is just not that effective. Why not go with the opener and then Mlodzinski? The Pirates’ thinking is baffling. The Pirate bats did come alive last night, getting 12 hits; they could only score 4 runs because of very bad baserunning that caused 2 outs and kept the Pirates from putting more pressure on the Mets. Joe Block kept calling the Mets last in the division, bemoaning the fact that the Pirates were going to lose to them. If the Mets had lost, they would have lost to the last place team in the Central Division. The fact remains, this was a game between two last place teams.
Key Moments Of The Game: The Mets were leading 1-0 going into the top of the 3rd inning. They had their own bonehead baserunning moment when, on a fly ball to left field, the runner on 2nd went all the way to third but did not retouch the bag, and the Pirates were able to record a double play. Francisco Lindor immediately stole 2nd base. The Mets followed that up with two singles, the first one scoring Lindor to make it 2-0. Marcus Semien took a 1-2 fastball on the inner third of the plate and drilled it into the left field seats for a 3-run homer, putting the Mets in front 5-0. The Mets added another run in the 4th after two were out. Evan Sisk hit a batter, who stole 2nd, and Lindor singled, driving him home. In the bottom of the 7th, it looked like the Pirates really had something going. They had scored 2 runs and had runners on 1st and 3rd with one out. Brandon Lowe popped out. Jared Triolo was the runner on 3rd base. He did not take a big enough lead at 3rd with the 3rd baseman playing way back. He was thrown out at the plate when he tried to score on a pitch that got by the catcher by about 20 feet. He would have scored if he had taken the proper lead. The play was not even close, but the Pirates challenged anyway, losing their challenge for the game. Those Pirates were thinking again. In the bottom of the 9th, an even bigger baserunning mistake was made. Jacob Gonzalez hit a deep drive off the Clemente wall, driving in the third run of the game, but then tried to go to second and was thrown out. The ball did carom off the wall right to the fielder, but the play was right in front of him. The Pirates were down by 3 runs. His run is meaningless. The Pirates still made it interesting, scoring a 4th run, but in the end, they lost their 4th in a row and 12 of their last 16 games.
Next game: Tonight, Mets in Pittsburgh. The Pirates blundered their way to another loss last night, but the bats did seem to wake up just a touch. If it were not for the base running miscues, they might have been able to pull the game out. I would say we are down to about a toss up of seeing meaningful games in September and that is an optimistic view. Oneil Cruz played in AAA last night which is good news. Now if they had just picked up a starter at the deadline. Robbie Ray would have been so nice. Although the way the Pirates think they may have put him in the bullpen.
The Goofy Game of Golf/Life Searching for the Answer 