There was a stunned silence in the home clubhouse as Pittsburgh Pirates players packed their equipment into travel bags Wednesday afternoon following a shellacking of a sweep by the Chicago Cubs.
The Cubs didn’t just win a three-game series at PNC Park. They poured it on in every way imaginable, scoring 41 runs and winning in a way the Pirates couldn’t have contemplated: Overcoming a seven-run deficit by scoring 11 unanswered runs over the final three innings for a 14-10 win.
Yes, the Pirates scored double-digit runs — and still found a way to lose.
“It’s tough, very tough,” Pirates shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa told TribLive. “No other way to put it, really. Just gut-wrenching. Not the way you want to lose games.”
Derek Shelton was furious, admitting “it’s about as frustrated as I’ve been.” In his five seasons as Pirates manager, Shelton has endured the worst record in baseball (19-41) in 2020, followed by the franchise’s first back-to-back 100-loss seasons since the mid-1950s. Now, Shelton is overseeing an epic collapse in August that rivals the one that got Clint Hurdle fired in 2019, when they lost 24 of 28 games after the All-Star break to go from one game under .500 to 48-69 in the span of a month.
These Pirates have lost 18 of 25 games since July 31, including a streak of 10 consecutive from Aug. 6-14. Nine of those losses were decided by one run. They went from being on the cusp of wild-card contention to taking a nosedive into last place in an NL Central where Milwaukee was the only team that started the week with a winning record.
No wonder Pirates players appeared shell-shocked.
“Since I’ve been here, I just felt like it hasn’t gone the way I wanted it to go or anybody has wanted it to go,” Kiner-Falefa said. “Since I’ve been here, things haven’t been good.”
The Pirates (62-71) have been swept seven times this season, but none were so lopsided in scoring as this Cubs series. It took six games for the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers to combine for 41 runs earlier this month. In mid-April, the New York Mets and Boston Red Sox both scored 18 runs in successive series against the Pirates.
The Cubs outscored the Pirates by 18 runs, 41-23.
“The mood,” Pirates left fielder Bryan Reynolds said, “speaks for itself.”
And, oh, by the way, the Pirates surprised everyone by moving Oneil Cruz from shortstop to center field in the middle of this mess.
1. Center of attention: Whether publicly or privately, Pirates players expressed surprise of the news of Cruz’s position switch.
Maybe none more so than Kiner-Falefa, his replacement at short.
“Yeah, a little bit just because this is Cruz’s franchise. In a way, him and Skenes are the franchise’s babies,” Kiner-Falefa told TribLive. “It caught me off-guard a little bit but, at the same time, we’ve got to do our job. If that’s what they want for him, it is what it is. I can play anywhere, so it doesn’t really matter. I think Cruz can play short but if that’s the direction they’re going to go, it is what it is. I think he’ll have fun out there.”
Cruz has been clear that his preference is to play shortstop but he is taking the move in stride so far. He made his first start in center Wednesday, and leadoff batter Ian Happ hit a double to left-center to get Cruz involved immediately.
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“Definitely being out there everyday is going to help me out,” Cruz said through translator Stephen Morales, a Pirates coach. “It’s not like playing in the infield, (where) you get no pitches off (and) you can’t just take your mind off the game at all. Out there, you have a little more time to think through things and stuff like that.”
Kiner-Falefa can relate, as the New York Yankees switched him from shortstop to center field in spring training last year amid competition with prospects Anthony Volpe and Oswald Peraza.
“For shortstops, it’s not terrible,” Kiner-Falefa said. “It’s not too tough because the athleticism at shortstop definitely translates to center field. It actually freed me up last year a lot. I had some issues in 2022 at shortstop in New York, (so) being able to go to the outfield last year really helped me this year in the infield.”
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Kiner-Falefa, who won an AL Gold Glove at third base with the Texas Rangers in 2020, believes playing center field could have the same effect on Cruz. The 6-foot-7 Cruz committed 24 errors, including a dozen since July 21, at shortstop this season.
“I almost feel like if you put him out there, you might have a better chance of coming back and being that much better,” Kiner-Falefa said, “because you’re able to use your athleticism and you realize that you can play that way at shortstop, if that makes sense.”
2. Rowdy in relief: It was a bad sign for the bullpen that the Pirates turned to first baseman Rowdy Tellez to pitch in the ninth inning twice in a three-day span.
“Obviously, it’s not ideal,” Tellez told TribLive. “It’s not what you want to do. Shelton doesn’t want to do that, either. That means we’re in a bad situation.”
That was true in both cases. On Saturday, Tellez homered in his first at-bat and then finished off a 10-2 loss to the Cincinnati Reds by recording the final three outs by getting a grounder for a double play and a fly ball. On Monday, the 6-foot-4, 270-pound left-hander drew cheers when he replaced Brady Feigl, a 33-year-old lefty making his major league debut, with one out in the 18-8 loss to the Cubs.
“I felt bad for Brady. I came into that situation and let all of his runs in,” Tellez said of Feigl, who was designated for assignment the next day. “I didn’t feel like I was throwing anything near the zone at all. The time before, I was. Everything was pretty close. I felt like it was non-competitive. That was a little frustrating, even though I know my job is to get the final outs.”
Tellez hit two batters, gave up a sacrifice fly, a single and a walk before getting the final out on a fly ball to center field. The velocity on his 16 pitches ranged between 42.2 mph to 58.9 mph, per Statcast, as Tellez threw what he calls an “air cutter” that has natural movement based on a certain grip.
“It happened. It’s part of the game,” Tellez said of his pitching. “You’re going to have your ups and downs. You can’t look at it as a negative. … You look at that like, oh, you had to pitch. Who knows what that means for our staff and rotation in the future?”
3. Skenes ‘struggled’: The final line for Skenes against the Cubs was respectable, as he gave up two earned runs on five hits and one walk with six strikeouts in five innings.
But he was far from dominant, especially early.
The Cubs scored one run in the first inning and two in the second, when Pete Crow-Armstrong scored on an error charged to Cruz on his first throw to home plate from center field that bounced past catcher Yasmani Grandal and Skenes failed to back up.
Skenes waited through a long bottom of the second, when the Pirates batted through the order and produced five runs to give him a 6-3 cushion. He pitched clean innings in the third and fourth, recording four strikeouts, before stranding runners on the corners in the fifth. After the Pirates padded their lead to 10-3, Shelton pulled Skenes despite throwing 52 of 82 pitches for strikes.
“I thought he did a good job,” Shelton said. “He struggled early and gave up the runs and had to sit for three innings because of the fact that offensively, we had a really good game. And then we extended the lead. That’s a time you should be able to take the guy out, where you’re trying to make sure that you’re being thoughtful about his innings, with the lead that we had. That’s a game that we had to finish and we didn’t finish it.”
Pulling Skenes after five innings appeared to be a safe decision with a seven-run cushion in the moment, even though the bullpen was beat up. It’s easy to second-guess in hindsight, given what transpired. It was just another example of Shelton pushing the wrong buttons, even when it looked felt like the right move.
4. Bullpen blues: Closer David Bednar might be the biggest concern, but Pirates relievers allowed 11 runs against the Cubs Wednesday despite inheriting a seven-run lead.
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Kyle Nicolas allowed two runs on two hits and three walks in 1 1/3 innings. Aroldis Chapman got the final two outs of the seventh but surrendered three runs in the eighth, which Dennis Santana finished with a double play.
“We’ve got to execute,” Shelton said. “We’re not executing. If you don’t execute at the end of games, you don’t win games. That’s what happened to us in August. It’s what we did a really good job at in June and July. We need to figure it out.”
Blame the bullpen all you want but the starters did the relievers no favors in the Cubs series. The Pirates got only 13 innings out of their top three starters, as Mitch Keller and Jared Jones lasted four innings each and Paul Skenes went five.
That taxed the relief corps, and it showed. And Shelton’s use of Chapman to cover multiple innings proved costly, as the Cubs built momentum on Christian Bethancourt’s two-run double and an RBI single by Ian Happ that brought the heart of the order to the plate for Bednar to face in the ninth inning.
Shelton is in a tough spot, trying to delicately balance the innings management for rookie right-handers Jones and Skenes against overworking his bullpen. Shelton, however, scoffed at the suggestion that the close games are taking a toll on the relievers.
“Nah, we play close games all the time,” Shelton said. “You would hope it would prepare them for something like that, because we’ve been in those situations.”
5. Bednar blows lead: It’s no secret that Bednar hasn’t been himself this season, as the two-time All-Star closer is far from dominant. His ERA has ballooned to 6.32 as opponents are batting .258 against Bednar, up from .215 last season.
After leading the majors in save percentage last year, Bednar blew a save opportunity for the sixth time when he entered the ninth with a two-run lead against the Cubs and gave up five runs.
“It sucks. There’s no other way around it,” Bednar said. “It’s tough and need to get over it. Just got to keep going.”
Whether Bednar continues in the closer role remains to be seen. After repeatedly pointing to the past two seasons of dominance to defend Bednar, Shelton sidestepped a direct question about Bednar in his postgame press conference by suggesting it was too soon.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do with Bednar right now,” Shelton said. “Probably a little fresh.”
Bednar expressed frustration about the Pirates sticking with him through his struggles only to “let them down,” but wasn’t concerned about losing his closer role.
“The only thing I can control is whenever the phone rings, I’m ready to go, and I have complete confidence in myself,” Bednar said. “Obviously, today doesn’t reflect what I think I can do. I know going forward I’m going to be better off. Just have to keep on going. That’s really the only thing: Just keep on going. Every time I go out there I have confidence in myself. Doesn’t always work, obviously. This is a tough patch, but I know I’m going to get through it.
“I just need to make better pitches. Execute and make the big pitch to be able to get out of that jam. It’s self-inflicted, but just got to figure out a way to get out of it and make that big pitch. Obviously, that’s what I’m not doing right now and I need to be able to do that.”
Kevin Gorman is a TribLive reporter covering the Pirates. A Baldwin native and Penn State graduate, he joined the Trib in 1999 and has covered high school sports, Pitt football and basketball and was a sports columnist for 10 years. He can be reached at kgorman@triblive.com.