Make that 12 losses out of 13 for the Pirates, who wasted six shutout innings from Joe Musgrove to lose to the Cardinals, 2-1, Sunday at PNC Park.
In the process, they were mathematically eliminated from postseason contention.
So, that counts as an excuse to look towards the future instead, right? This could be a transformative offseason for the Pirates’ roster, too, especially for their double play duo.
You remember them, right? Adam Frazier at second, Kevin Newman at short. They were projected to split time as the leadoff guy in the order, and ideally, turn a whole lot of 6-4-3s.
Here was their last attempt to turn one this season, from the first game they lost to the Cardinals on Friday:
That’s a pretty fitting metaphor for their seasons as a whole.
It’s been a sharp decline for both. Newman was one of baseball’s best rookie performers in 2019, batting .308 and finishing with an .800 OPS and 3.1 WAR.
Frazier was a gold glove nominee at second base, and despite being streaky at the plate, finished with a respectable 97 OPS+ and 2 WAR. He couldn’t replicate what he did at the end of 2018, but he still had a more than serviceable campaign.
Instead, Newman and Frazier are batting .224 and .215, respectively. Newman has a .556 OPS. Frazier a .605. Frazier is still providing good defense, keeping his head barely above the replacement level waters. Newman has been worth -0.6 WAR.
"I hope to get better every year," Newman said before the game Saturday. "Do I think I did that? No. I don't think I’ve performed nearly to how I’m capable of [performing]. I'm not happy with how I played, by any means. I'm going to use that as fuel going into the offseason."
Newman’s offseason started later that day when he was hit in the left knee with a pitch. It looked ugly, especially when he left the field with two athletic trainers while keeping his leg in the air. Fortunately for the Pirates and him, it was instead a contusion of the peroneal nerve of his left knee. No fracture, no surgery required. It will still require a stint on the injured list, but that was easily the best case scenario.
It’s about time the Pirates had something, anything, be a “best case scenario,” especially when looking at where these players were a year ago.
During summer camp, when the talk around the club was around this season being a “sprint” and how anything could happen. The catch to “anything can happen” is that anything can happen.
Frazier and Newman have not been the only two that struggled this year. Far from it. The performances of just two players do not result in a 15-38 record. That’s a team effort.
“[I] felt really good going into the quarantine stuff,” Frazier said Sunday. “Came out, had a good spring, then it kind of lost the feeling of what was going on. It’s been an uphill battle since then. I know there’s much more in the tank.”
Ben Cherington and Derek Shelton have talked about establishing a “meritocracy” within the organization. Neither has done much to bolster his case this season.
Cole Tucker and Erik Gonzalez have cooled off significantly at the plate, but they are still options up the middle. Nick Gonzales, Oneil Cruz and Liover Peguero are all highly touted prospects who should be major-league ready within the next couple years, including 2021. There are options.
Granted, evaluations will not be made solely on 2020 results. It is just a two month sample size, after all.
“There’s a lot about this year that makes it hard to evaluate,” Cherington said this week. “I would still argue that as far as individual players are concerned, certainly the top-line outcomes, like ERA, OPS and the top-line performance outcomes are pretty noisy just because the sample is still really small. And, the preparation for the season was much different. I think we have to be really careful about weighing the top-line outcomes that much individually.”
Frazier in particular has been burned by the shortened season. He’s always been the type of player who gets better as the year goes on. He was optioned in the first half of 2018, but once he was recalled, he was the best hitter in the Pirates’ lineup. Through the first three months of 2019, he had a .672 OPS. From July 1 through the end of the season, it was .836.
“For a lot of guys including myself, we start out slow,” Frazier said. “Knowing there were only 60 games, you look up, and 10 games in you’re hitting .200 or whatever it may be, you start putting that pressure on yourself. You kind of let it snowball. That made it tougher.
“It’s not where anybody wants to be,” he added shortly after. “It’s frustrating. The whole year has been frustrating as far as not being able to have people in the stands to entertain, to live off the adrenaline rush and get hyped up for games, that kind of thing. Being shrunk to 60 games is part of the challenges as well. We all let that hit us right across the jaw and take us out of our game to say the least.”
Frazier has been splitting his time between second and left field over the past few weeks, accommodating a roster that needs to carry extra pitchers rather than outfielders. He could be in such a role in 2021.
That is assuming he is still a Pirate in 2021, which is far from a guarantee.
Frazier’s name popped in talks during the 2019 winter meetings and during the Aug. 31 trade deadline, even amid his season-long struggles. Streakiness aside, teams are going to like the relative low cost upside he brings.
“Yeah, it could happen,” Frazier said about the possibility of him being dealt. “I had a little bit last offseason when my name was popping up a lot. So I’d assume the same kind of stuff will happen again this offseason. None of it’s in my control, so we’ll see what happens.”
For Newman, he will definitely be back, but there is no guarantee where he is going to play either. He’s bounced between shortstop and second all season, and hasn’t played particularly well in the field at either spot.
“I haven't thought too much into it. It is what it is,” Newman said on bouncing between the two spots. “When my name is in the lineup, whether I’m at short or second, I have a job to do that day. I don't really think about it much more than that.”
Newman looked like a building block for this club after 2020. His sophomore slump has been fierce. Frazier’s status of the second basemen of the future looks very much in doubt, whether he is traded or moves to a utility role.
This is not what the Pirates wanted from their middle infield. What else can they do but try to get better in the future?
“We're seeing it with a couple of our guys that had successful rookie seasons, there’s adjustments made and now we have to adjust back,” Shelton said, referring to just Newman, but staying consistent with a message he's had for many players this year. “We will spend the offseason trying to identify not only in conversations with Kevin of what he feels he needs to do better but looking into it a little bit deeper, how we can make adjustments.”
JUSTIN BERL / GETTY
Bryan Reynolds slides into second with a double Sunday.
• Before the game, Jason Martin was recalled, taking Newman's spot on the roster.
• Musgrove struck out a career high 11 batters, saying he felt he took some of the "delivery stuff" he discovered towards his last start against the Reds into this outing.
He also carried a lot from the UFC fight he watched Saturday.
Donald 'Cowboy' Cerrone is one of his favorite fighters, and his match Saturday went to a decision and wound up as a draw. That's his fifth straight fight without a win. In the post fight interview, he talked about how he wasn't having fun during that stretch, and that he needs to step back and look into what he is putting into the sport.
That spoke to Musgrove, who himself does not have a win this season.
"I feel like sometimes I get caught up in trying to do things for other people and trying to be the guy on the staff that’s going to turn things around and trying to carry the whole team when I just need to worry about myself," Musgrove said. "This year hasn’t been what I wanted it to be as a team and individually, and I feel like today I went out there with the mentality of this being for me. I needed to prove to myself that I still have that dog in me, that competitive spirit.
"That’s been my strongest point for my whole career is the ability to go out and compete, and I feel like I let the way that this season’s gone and my performance affect my ability to go out there and compete and leave it all out there. I feel like that’s what I did today.”
So Musgrove took a step back and took a look at what makes him good.
Turns out, it's his breaking pitches. After relying on fastballs in the first, Musgrove moved off it and threw primarily sliders, curveballs and changeups the rest of the way. The slider was his most used pitch of the night, getting nine whiffs on the 27 times he threw it.
Five of his punchouts were with the pitch, including this one that ran on Paul DeJong in the first:
"He had really good stuff," Shelton said. "I mean, that's back-to-back good starts from our starters. Executing all of their pitches, pretty much being in complete control. So really positive as we're building towards the end of the year, that's two things that really stand out. That's back-to-back zero runs from both guys, executing all of their pitches. That's a good sign."
• That's two straight games the Pirates got six innings of shutout baseball from their start. It also was the second straight game they lost the lead in the seventh:
That was Yadier Molina going yard on a 2-2 breaking ball from Derek Holland that finished just a bit high. It was the only offense the Cardinals had all game.
"He left a slider down and in to a Hall of Famer, and he hit it out," Shelton said. That's what it was."
Entering the series, Pirates starters had combined for just two quality starts all season. This series against the Cardinals, they had three, but the only one they won was Steven Brault's complete game Thursday.
"It's frustrating that we got out with one win," Shelton said. "In the long term of it, we had three really good starts that we're gonna build on, and that's a really good sign moving forward for our starters. I think those are the things we need to focus on. For us to win games, we're going to have to score runs, and we haven't scored runs. But on the pitching side, it's really positive."
The Pirates were held to just two hits all night, and scraped together their run in the fourth on a Bryan Reynolds hustle double, Frazier bunt and Colin Moran sacrifice fly.
Moran was the only hitter in the lineup with an OPS over .700. The bottom three, Jose Osuna (.474), JT Riddle (.405) and John Ryan Murphy (.464) are all under .500, not to mention well below the Mendoza-line.
To repeat what Shelton just said in the previous quote: "For us to win games, we're going to have to score runs, and we haven't scored runs."
• Factoid of the night: This was Flaherty's second straight 10+ strikeout game at PNC Park, the other occurring on Sept. 8, 2019. He is just the fourth pitcher in the stadium's history to do that, joining Randy Johnson (three starts), Oliver Perez (two starts) and Curt Schilling (two starts).
