MILWAUKEE -- The six weeks leading to the trade deadline will not be the first in which Adam Frazier’s heard his name bandied about in different rumors predicting where he might be playing baseball come Aug. 1.
But what will be new in this context is his standing as one of the most successful hitters in baseball during a season in which a consistent bat might be hard to come by.
Frazier was overtaken on the MLB hits leaderboard and snapped a career-best 13-game hitting streak after taking an 0 for 4 in the Pirates’ 7-4 loss to the Brewers at American Family Field on Friday night.
But of course, it’s the first time Frazier’s name isn’t aboard the top of that particular chart in more than three weeks, and he’s still tops with 22 doubles while compiling a fifth-best .328 batting average.
That’s the type of thing that will only add fuel to, not snuff out that proverbial fire. And it’s impossible for Frazier, or anyone who follows the sport, really, not to notice.
It’s just not what’s important on a daily basis.
“I could wake up one day and get shipped across the country,” Frazier said during a one-on-one interview on the field at batting practice. “Who knows? But, right now, it's: Be where your feet are.”
The 29-year-old has good reason to be unworried about his standing in the game. Even as the losses mount for the Pirates on a particularly difficult night for Frazier himself.
Frazier has adopted a “whatever happens, happens” attitude about the prospect of being traded. And as the deadline nears, a clearer picture is painted of his potential suitors. On Thursday night, news that Nick Madrigal, the second baseman on the first-place White Sox, suffered a potentially season-ending hamstring tear sounded off alarm bells among a tremendous number of both local and national reporters and analysts. There were probably even a number of Pirates fans who saw that news and rushed to their keyboards to type, “White Sox prospects” into their search engines.
Even if this type of thing isn’t a distraction and most certainly not a point of focus, it’s still impossible to ignore completely.
“You notice things,” Frazier admitted. “I'm not worried about it or anything else.”
As these outside factors persist, it’s hard not to notice the effects of the incredible season are having on Frazier. It’s obviously common practice for teammates and players to pick each other’s minds to try and improve their game. But when one of the members of a clubhouse mostly full of struggling hitters is actually among the most consistent in the game at the present, he might be sought out more than most.
“Guys come to me a little more now when things are going good,” Frazier said. “You just try to stay focused and take it one day at a time.”
Sure, this isn’t anything new in the grand scheme of things. Hitters talk. How else would they all know to say, “hitting is contagious,” at every opportunity if it wasn’t a coordinated effort? (Kidding.)
But this dynamic has thrust Frazier into a leadership role through which he’s found another avenue to thrive in this game.
“He's a leader in how he just goes about his business,” Gregory Polanco said. “Every year, you see how he's being more mature just in life.”
Polanco and Frazier are the longest tenured and highest-paid players on the team -- even if those salaries combined wouldn’t measure up to what 2018 National League MVP and Friday night’s hero, Christian Yelich is making in each of the next seven years.
Polanco’s days with the Pirates are also probably nearer his last than his first.
“I'm lucky to have him here even though, like, I'm not doing as great, but he's always trying to help me and the younger guys too,” Polanco said. “ He loves hitting, you know? So, he's just about hitting.”
It has not been an easy season for Polanco, but he’s still capable of doing things like this.
Nobody is looking to make Frazier take responsibility for Polanco. But in consistently checking in with a guy with that sort of capability, rather than just giving up, he’s displaying a leadership quality that will be crucial for at least one member of this team to have should this rebuild actually work.
“I have some experience with some things, so if they're struggling, they'll come to me with something, and I'm happy to help in any way I can,” Frazier said. “I like the coaching aspect of baseball, and other sports. So I try to pay attention to little things like that and pick up on little cues here and there that might help a guy out.”
Maybe that leader can be Frazier himself. Or a veteran like Jacob Stallings can hang around. But if it’s not, the Pirates need that leadership quality to rub off on a Ke’Bryan Hayes or Bryan Reynolds-type player that’s here for the long haul.
“It’s really important for our younger players to talk to him about what he’s seeing and how he’s seeing it and how he’s going about his work on a daily basis,” Derek Shelton said.
There was a satisfying moment during batting practice that demonstrates both how well-received Frazier has been with the fan base, and his knowledge of the right thing to do.
Without so much as a word, Frazier quickly jumped out of the tunnel in the third-base dugout with a bat in his hand. He hooked a turn through the netting and poked his head over the seats just enough to be able to toss the bat safely on top of the dugout.
The sound of the bat startled a young fan wearing a black Adam Frazier jersey and an Indianapolis Indians hat that was standing with his family in the otherwise completely empty section.
“We weren't here for 30 seconds, and all of a sudden there's this bat rolling toward us,” said Mary Miller, the mother of Ted Miller, the boy pictured here holding the souvenir which Frazier had somehow found the time to autograph.
GERARD GILBERTO / DKPS
Ted Miller.
The Miller family -- yes, this was a wonderful little twist of fate as there’s plenty of Miller left in Milwaukee, despite whatever they call the ballpark now -- are Pirates fans from Chicago who made the short trek north for the birthday of Matt Miller, Ted’s father. Matt has the only real connection to Pittsburgh because, as he put it, he was “conceived there.”
It was a very cool gesture that obviously meant a lot to a player that’s eager to get back to ballpark life was before the pandemic. But to not say anything at all, just grin and wait for eye contact to confirm that bat was all but Ted’s, was a wonderful display of his crafty intelligence and wit.
Frazier knows he’s getting attention. He’s absolutely earned it. In fairness to the rebuild, there is a tactical coherence to trading him. But if he departs, the Pirates are going to have to replace more than just a ton of hits.
MORE FROM THIS GAME
• No Pirates hitters were made available on the postgame Zoom call following the team's fifth loss in a row, one shy of their worst stretch of the season.
But on a night where Stallings, Reynolds and Colin Moran had the night off until the final inning, all of the offense came on the strength of three homers. Much like the Polanco tank above, all three were absolute no-doubters, with the first coming off the bat of Ben Gamel, his first as a Pirate, and the last by Hayes, his third this year.
Hayes earned his daily update in the eighth inning on a two-run shot off side-arming lefty Hoby Milner. But Polanco and Gamel each took one of the game’s best pitchers, Brandon Woodruff, deep to the second deck in right field.
“Tonight I thought the changeup was as good as we’ve seen it and the way he executed it,” Shelton said. “We knew coming in we were going to have to scratch for runs, and those guys took pretty good swings off him.”
Gamel is obviously familiar with Woodruff from being his former teammate right here in Milwaukee. Even Woodruff had some fun with the homer, saying, “that’s Benny G’s swing, man. Down and in.”
But the player with the deepest history with Woodruff was, ironically, Frazier, his college teammate at Mississippi State. And Frazier was very excited to talk about the emergence of the potential Cy Young candidate when asked during batting practice.
“His delivery has changed a lot from college to now. He was kind of slow and methodical coming down the mound, and now he gets down the mound real fast and throws 98 to 100 [mph]. He figured it out, and he's always changing,” Frazier said. “He’ll throw a curveball more now than he has in the past. Using a little slider. And it's something he's worked on in the past two years. He was trying to sprinkle it in last year.
“I don't know if anybody even knew that.”
The Pirates drafted Frazier in the sixth round of 2013, one year before the Brewers tabbed Woodruff with their 11th-round selection. Frazier explained that Woodruff already had the stuff, but just needed the confidence to go out and be the dominant pitcher he is today.
“I've kind of seen his evolution up close and personal,” Frazier said. “Coming from a little bitty school in Mississippi, he got thrown into the SEC, and he had to grow up. And he did that.”
This is a decent lesson for another guy who was also a highly-regarded prospect, not out of high school, but in the highest levels of the minors. Without saying any names, Frazier agreed that a few of those types of pitchers exist in the Pirates’ clubhouse.
“We got a few guys that have that kind of ability. It's a matter of getting that out of each guy,” he said. “So, it's guys need to have some success in order to believe in themselves and to figure out how to make their stuff work. And once they do, the sky's the limit.”
• This game was tied headed into the seventh inning, but a typically steady member of the bullpen in Clay Holmes that coughed the game away for the Pirates.
Holmes, like Frazier, also lost an impressive streak. He had gone 17 appearances since he’d last allowed an earned run, but managed to issue four walks, one intentional in the Brewers’ five-run seventh.
“He just didn’t have his best stuff,” Shelton said. “I think we’ve been really spoiled because he’s been really good.”
The inning was punctuated by Yelich’s go-ahead, two-run double, which looked like it could have been an inning-ending double play ball off the bat, but was hit just too hard and just out of the reach of a diving Frazier at second.
The Brewers were able to pile on after Holmes’ departure, drawing a pair of bases loaded walks from Trevor Cahill in the veteran right-hander’s first game back off the injured list and bullpen debut.
“I think he was kind of spinning off a little bit early on. I think that was the big thing. We saw most of the misses against the arm side,” Shelton said. “It looked like he opened up and kind of rotated a little bit. Then he was able to right himself that second inning.”
The Holmes-Cahill act followed a strong outing from Sam Howard, who needed just 12 pitches to go record four outs. He was the first out of the bullpen in relief of Chase De Jong, who issued the first four of the 11 walks by Pirates pitchers Friday night.
“In my last start, I was kind of missing too much over the plate,” De Jong explained. “So that was kind of the adjustment that we made to it, thinking -- I don’t want to say it’s OK to walk guys, but we were much more strategic in what we were giving them to hit, and you can see that in the fact that we got off the barrel a lot better today.”
De Jong was largely effective for five innings in his third turn through the rotation. He’s completed five innings in each start and allowed a pair of runs on four hits against the Brewers on Friday.
THE ESSENTIALS
Boxscore
Scoreboard
Standings
Statistics
THE LINEUPS
Shelton's card:
Adam Frazier, 2B
Ke'Bryan Hayes, 3B
Gregory Polanco, RF
Phillip Evans, 1B
Ben Gamel, LF
Michael Perez, C
Kevin Newman, SS
Ka'ai Tom, LF
Chase De Jong, P
And for Craig Counsell's Brewers:
Luis Urias, 3B
Daniel Vogelbach, 1B
Christian Yelich, LF
Avisail Garcia, RF
Omar Narvaez, C
Willy Adames, SS
Jace Peterson, 2B
Jackie Bradley Jr., CF
Brandon Woodruff, P
THE SCHEDULE
The Pirates continue their series in Milwaukee before hitting the road for Washington on Monday. Chad Kuhl gets the nod against another incredible Milwaukee right-hander, Corbin Burnes. First pitch is scheduled for 4:10 p.m. Eastern.
THE CONTENT
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