Two days, two winnable games lost in St. Louis by the Pirates. I think that this one is mostly chalked up to awful defense, with Pedro Alvarez missing a third inning scoop that lead to the Cardinals’ first two runs, and Gregory Polanco completely whiffing on a sixth inning Yadier Molina single, turning it into a run scoring triple that ended up helping the Cardinals press their second two runs across. The Pirates stranded base runners all over the place, and besides Andrew McCutchen’s home run in the fourth and triple in the fifth they didn’t have any luck scoring runs.
I do think it’s worth noting that Cole threw 106 pitches in 5 1/3 innings, though, and that he’s failed to get out of the fifth in two of his last three starts, while only going six in the third. Obviously one of those starts was against the Reds and he’s got a thing with the Reds, while tonight’s start had defensive problems that lengthened innings. Still, with a rotation in as bad shape at the bottom as the Pirates’ rotation is, that’s not a helpful output from the guy at the top.
These games are really hard to process, because there’s the obvious emotional reaction to the Pirates basically eliminating themselves from the NL Central race by losing two hugely winnable games to the Cardinals to open this series (and because they’ve lost, by my count, 372 consecutive games at Busch Stadium by a total of 375 runs), but there’s also the lurking rotation problem that’s been an elephant in the room for a while. This Pirate team showed over the weekend that their offense is good enough to slug their way out of a lot of problems, but they’re not good enough to slug their way out of bad starts or bad defense against the Cardinal rotation, and every single start that goes less than six innings asks a lot out of the offense and puts a lot of stress on the bullpen. Those starts are adding up now; Pirate starters have gone less than six innings in six of eight August games, and they’ve gone less than seven innings in seven of eight. This might not be anything more than a lull in the season and Cole and Liriano will be able to steer the team out of in the near future and the Pirates certainly have enough offense, bullpen, and wins in the bank to be able to absorb a bad stretch from their rotation, but this is the first time I’ve felt worried about the Pirates since May. Maybe that’s what two losses to the Cardinals do to someone that should have more perspective, but then, two losses don’t have to be completely ignored when there’s been a creeping uncertainty about the rotation for the last two weeks.
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