"The pride of Pittsburgh," as Rowdy Tellez noted after the Pirates' 5-3 loss to the Tigers Tuesday afternoon at PNC Park, is currently in a major funk.
Having entered the ninth inning with a 3-1 lead, it was David Bednar's lack of control that led to his major-league-leading third blown save in four chances in this young season. Bednar permitted four runs, all earned, on three hits while issuing a walk and hitting two batters in one-third of an inning of work. It was after the seventh hitter Bednar faced when Derek Shelton pulled the plug on his two-time All-Star closer. That at-bat resulted in an RBI single off the bat of Jake Rogers, giving the Tigers a two-run cushion.
Bednar gave the ball up to Shelton and walked back to the Pirates' third-base dugout to a mix of boos and jeers from the home crowd, which Tellez took umbrage. That sparked the following speech to open the post-game media scrum with Bednar, starting with the aforementioned term of endearment:
"We don't do that out here," Tellez said in Bednar's defense. "We're a good team. We're winning for a reason. We're gonna get our man back on track, but what happened today is, I think, unacceptable. We as a group in Pittsburgh gotta be better. He's an All-Star for a reason and we just have to be better. That being said, two-time All-Star."
Bednar was much more docile in his dissection of why he's looked anything other than an All-Star closer.
"Just no control in the zone right now," Bednar said. "That's my bread and butter, that's what makes me good. Just need to get back to throwing strikes in the zone and competing in the zone, and when I do that, good things happen."
Bednar walked Riley Greene and hit Spencer Torkelson with an errant curveball to put two runners on without allowing a hit. Gio Urshela then singled in Greene, and pinch-runner Zach McKinstry scored on an errant throw from Michael A. Taylor in center field that tried to get McKinstry out at third base and skipped out of play.
Colt Keith grounded to Tellez to advance pinch-runner Parker Meadows to third, and pinch-hitter Kerry Carpenter singled in Meadows for the Tigers' third run and a 4-3 lead. The Tigers added an insurance run as Javier Baez was hit in the back by a wild curveball and Rogers singled in Carpenter. From that point, Roansy Contreras entered and struck out Matt Vierling and got Mark Canha to fly out to end the Tigers' prowl.
The hit parade continues 🔥 pic.twitter.com/70uFZyGsGW
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) April 9, 2024
"Obviously it's tough. You never want to have these stretches, but I think everybody's gone through these before," Bednar said. "I've had some struggles before and overcome them. It's still so early. Obviously very frustrating, but at the end of the year, hopefully we'll be looking back and laughing at this."
He has turned in a 12.46 ERA by allowing six earned runs in 4 1/3 innings this season. Shelton and Bednar both claimed the closer is healthy, but something is clearly off with Bednar's command given this trend.
"I think the command issue is something we've got to get cleaned up," Shelton said. "What we've seen over the past couple of years is he's had elite command, and over the last three or four outings that just hasn't been there. Even with the curveball hitting Torkelson, we have to clean up the command issue. ... He's healthy. It's a matter of being sharp. I think this is also a matter of when you see pitchers miss spring training, this can have some effect."
Bednar dealt with right lat tightness during spring training and pitched just two innings in that circuit, so these struggles bring some validity to the argument that Bednar did not have enough time to iron out kinks while in Pirate City.
"I would say, in this case, because of how sharp we've seen him previously, it looks like that's the indicator," Shelton said.
Here is a chart of Bednar's outing from Tuesday via Baseball Savant:
Baseball Savant
The blown save by Bednar overshadows the longest outing by a Pirates starter amid a flurry of solid outings from the rotation, which is one reason why the club is off to a hot start. Martín Pérez spun eight innings of one-run ball, struck out seven and did not walk a batter on an even 100 pitches. Pérez delivered the rotation's sixth consecutive start of allowing two or fewer runs. His lone blemish was in the top of the first, when Torkelson drove in Matt Vierling with a single, the third allowed by Pérez in the inning. He then got Urshela to ground into an inning-ending double play that was highlighted by a diving glove-side stop by Ke'Bryan Hayes.
Pérez induced 11 ground-ball outs and threw 15 first-pitch strikes to the 29 batters he faced Tuesday.
"When you don't throw too hard, that's how you have to pitch," Pérez said. "You've got to move the ball. You can not stay on one side because they're going to hit you. In the first inning, that's what happened. I just went back to the report and I think that was a great decision to stick with the plan. It got me eight innings today."
Edward Olivares punctuated the Pirates' offense with solo home runs in the second and sixth innings. Tuesday's game was his third career multi-homer game and the first by a Pirate this season.
"My timing right now is good and I'm seeing the ball really good," Olivares said through a translation by coach Stephen Morales. "Just proud of how hard I've worked."
The Pirates, which entered Tuesday in a tie for the best record in Major League Baseball, dropped to 9-3 and will hit the road for four games in Philadelphia beginning Thursday and three games against the Mets beginning Monday. Pittsburgh went 3-2 in the first home stand of the season.
"I'm extremely pleased," Shelton said. "We're 9-3 and we've played very good baseball. I mean, look at the ninth inning tonight. Rowdy gets a base hit, we hit into a double play ball, Henry (Davis) gets a base hit, (pinch-hitter Oneil) Cruz hits a ball on the nose. This group continues to go. I think we've seen that all throughout 12 games whether that's the three that we've lost or the nine that we've won, they've played for 27 outs. As long as we keep doing that we're going to be in a good spot."
