After a week of playing a sport that only vaguely resembled baseball in Arizona and Colorado this week, the Pirates’ fifth straight win looked a lot more to my eye like the Pirates of 2013-2015. Juan Nicasio threw seven brilliant shutout innings, striking out eight and holding the Reds to just three hits. The Pirates built out a lead over a few innings, stringing hits together in the third (a single from Mercer, a walk from Jaso, a single from Freese), then getting a solo homer from Josh Harrison in the fourth and a two-run pinch-hit homer from Matt Joyce in the seventh. The bullpen was not really all that good (both Tony Watson and Arquimedes Caminero hit rough spots), but at least it was good enough to get the win.
Nicasio was the story from this game, of course, and so we’re left to sit here the morning after the game and wonder how much of last night’s result was because of something different he did and how much of it was his opponent. As in all of his starts so far, his velocity dipped as the game went on (he was at/above 98 in the first inning and dipping below 94 by the time he was done), and he was more successful the first time through the order than he was on subsequent trips (five strikeouts the first trip through, only three after that). His command seemed better than it did on some of his worse starts, but I also saw a few strikeouts in which not one pitch appeared to actually cross the strike zone. Still, the box score is the box score; 63 of his 97 pitches were strikes, those latter trips through the lineup didn’t yield hard-hit balls this time, and a bunch of his fastballs read as sinkers on PitchFX, which they hadn’t previously done (which may or may not mean anything). As always, once the start is over and the result is up, it becomes a bunch more data points to try and paint a larger picture of Nicasio with. Despite my reservations, there are a bunch of positive signs from him this early in the season.
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