ST. LOUIS -- See that photo up there?
That's it. That's the column.
And that, for anyone who spared themselves the bulk of the Pirates' 9-1 burial at the Cardinals' hands Saturday at Busch Stadium, was the third-string catcher working a full-count, bases-loaded walk in the second inning to account for all of the offense on this afternoon.
Here's the full sequence:
• Josh Bell singled sharply.
• Colin Moran singled sharply.
• Phillip Evans was hit by a pitch to load the bases with nobody out.
• Guillermo Heredia, who'd have to go a long way toward looking worse at the plate than in the opener the previous night, pulled that off by watching an Adam Wainwright 91.3-mph fastball paint the outer corner, this after swinging through a hanging curve right down Market Street.
• It's then that John Ryan Murphy, aforementioned third-string catcher and owner of a career .220 average, worked that walk to bring home Bell. That tied the score at 1-1.
• I'll pause here for a mandatory woo.
• Cole Tucker steps into the box, having watched a future Hall of Famer feel at least possible heat, no doubt fully aware he could apply more ... but he instead awkwardly hacked at the first pitch he saw, a cutter coming in on his hands, well out of the zone ...
MLB.COM... and popped up to short:
That's ... not good. And it's the main reason I'm constantly cautioning against raising expectations for Tucker. Until he can hit in the bigs, there shouldn't be any.
• Back to the top of the order, Kevin Newman takes a far smarter approach, gets ahead 2-1, gets an absolutely awful second strike called against him by Ed Hickox, then gets forced to swing out his zone and ground out to short.
End inning.
End game, really.
End season?
No, I'm not going there. That'd be weird, no matter how many I'll bet would readily embrace any such declaration.
But I will say this: The Pirates aren't just 0-2 right now. They're 0-5.4.
It takes only a couple taps of the calculator to see that, in Major League Baseball's 60-game season, each game is like 2.7 in the standard 162-game schedule. It's almost like each game is a series unto itself. And even with 16 teams making the expanded playoffs rather than 10, that makes each one of these events -- meaning each game, each rally, each pitch -- critical in an unprecedented way.
Thus, here's the news flash: If the Pirates lose Sunday and get swept, they'll be 0-3 -- or 0-8.1 in the old math -- and I'm not seeing anything resembling hope any more than I would for an ordinary 0-8 start.
Any added pressure already?
"It’s two games. Let’s not get crazy," Derek Shelton responded to that being broached afterward in his Zoom call with reporters. "You can’t get reactionary with anything. I think you guys have gotten to know me well enough to know that I’m not reactionary in any way."
That's plausible. He's as easygoing as it gets, effortlessly smiling through each day.
But then there was Trevor Williams, the day's starter, after a disappointing 3 2/3-inning line of three runs, five hits, a Paul Goldschmidt home run that still hasn't landed and a pitch count of 67 to record 11 outs.
I asked how it felt just to be out on the mound, pitching healthy and in anger for the first time since early last summer, and he answered, "It was nice to just to know it was go time. It was nice to know that these games count. It felt like this start counted as four ... three or four starts. I went into it like I had to prepare more than my usual. I felt like I had to be especially ready for this start."
Now, later in the conversation, when pressure arose anew, he answered, "We’re looking forward to every opportunity. We know that those wins are going to come. And when the wins do come, it’s going to count as three or four. It’s one of those where we’re showing up every day to the yard hungry. ... As far as pressure, if we’re putting too much pressure on ourselves, I don’t see it that way."
Maybe he's right. Maybe the Pirates aren't buckling as much as they are just being bad. But make no mistake: Either scenario is dire to anyone taking the season seriously, as I'm positive these players are. They're way too close to proceed otherwise, no matter what any perception from the outside.
Because of that, I can't help but feel it's already magnified that the team's batting .169 with two total walks. That there's been one extra-base hit, a Moran double in the opener. That there were three measly singles on this day. That the top three in the order -- Newman, Bryan Reynolds, Adam Frazier -- are a combined 2 for 23. That the bottom three in the order has somehow been even worse. That the pitchers have a 5.63 and have served up four home runs. That there've been two official errors, plus four other fielding miscues by my count.
The top of the order's got me more bugged than any of it, to be blunt. This part wasn't optional. This was supposed to be the given. But when even Reynolds, the lineup's most reliable performer, goes 0 for 7 and doesn't reach base until a walk in his final plate appearance Saturday, that puts everything in a different light.
I ran this past Shelton and, in doing so, erroneously referred to these two games here as representing 1/15th of the season. To which he playfully shot back, "First off, please never asked me to do math. I told you I was bad at fourth-grade math, so if we're doing fractions, I'm not gonna be good at that."
Turning straight, he essentially reiterated, "It's two games. You can magnify it because it's a shorter season. But the most important thing is, these guys are going to hit. They’re going to have better at-bats. We just have to get our feet on the ground and get going."
Well, they've got the walking part down.
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