In the first five at-bats of tonight’s game, the Pirates were hit by two pitches, hit two singles, and had a 2-0 lead with runners on first and second and one out. It looked a lot like the Pirates were going to get to Jerome Williams in the exact fashion that you’d think that they should, given that they’re one of the best offenses in baseball and Jerome Williams is a journeyman cut by two of the worst teams in the American League already this year. Williams got out of that jam and then more or less cruised through the second, third, and fourth innings, striking out six Pirates total in the process, counting his two from the first inning. To makes things worse, Williams singled in to runs in the bottom of the fourth, completely reversing the Pirates’ early 2-0 and putting the Phillies up 3-2.
When the Pirates came up in the fifth inning, I thought, “Well, maybe the third time through the order will be different.” Then Starling Marte struck out. I honestly didn’t think much about Andrew McCutchen hitting a home run, because he’s still so obviously in pain from his rib problem, but I hoped that maybe he’d be able to get on base and get a rally started. Instead he crushed a ball into Citizen Bank Park’s goofy left-center Bermuda Triangle. Ben Revere went up the angled fence to make a play, but had no chance. He crashed into the wall and the ball ricocheted hard off the wall and back into center field. McCutchen scored standing up. Two batters later, Russell Martin got a ball up into the stands. In the sixth, the Pirates knocked Luis Garcia around for two more runs. The Pirate bullpen, tonight comprised of Bobby LaFromboise, John Holdzkom, Tony Watson, and Mark Melancon, put down the Phillies in order for four innings, striking out six hitters.
There are plenty of things that we could talk about in the aftermath of this game, but I want to focus on McCutchen. On August 2nd, McCutchen was hit in the back with a 95 mph fastball. On August 3rd, he left the game early after breaking his rib hitting a sac fly in the eighth inning of a Pirate loss. McCutchen returned from the injury exactly 15 days laters, having missed 14 games. He’s still wearing some kind of compression shirt to protect the rib, and it occasionally looks like he’s in a lot of pain out on the field. He re-injured the rib on August 26th, came out of that game, and played the next night. Not counting tonight’s game, which will pad the line some, he’s hitting .303/.341/.513 since coming off of the disabled list. His inside-the-park home run tonight was his sixth since the injury. The Pirates are now 12-8 since his return (recall that they lost the last six games that they played without him).
Essentially, what happened was Andrew McCutchen got hit in the back of his ribcage with a fastball, which combined with the insane speed and torque of his swing to cause a rib fracture. He missed the minimum number of games possible while on the disabled list, has missed zero games since returning, and has hit like a reasonable facsimile of himself since returning. He’s not quite the dynamic .300/.400/.500 hitting league MVP that we saw in 2012, 2013, and this year through the end of July, but he’s really close given the nature of his injury and the fact that we’re still only about five weeks removed from it. This is an incredible performance from an incredible baseball player, and I’m not sure that we’re all talking enough about it.
Anyway, the Pirates won, the Brewers won, the Braves won, and the Cardinals lost. That means that the Pirates’ lead on the second wild card remains at 1 1/2 games, and that their deficit in the NL Central is down to 3 1/2 games, which is just small enough that you can talk yourself into it being surmountable with 17 games left on the schedule. They’re also 3 1/2 back of the Giants (who are playing right now) for the first wild card, but, well, I care way more about the second wild card and the NL Central at this point in time.
