Gray's sweeper leaves Pirates searching for more offensively

ST. LOUIS -- A second straight game resulted in the Pirates searching for more offense against a National League Central rival on Wednesday night. A day after generating just enough run production in the ninth inning to overcome a three-hit effort, the bats were held at bay by Cardinals starter Sonny Gray in a 4-2 loss at Busch Stadium. 

"When he's got it going out like that, it's tough," Derek Shelton said of Gray, who allowed one run in seven innings. "I mean, you've got to make sure you do not miss the mistakes. And, he did not make a lot of them tonight. He just pitched really well."

While Gray used his entire arsenal, led by a heavy dose of cutters and four-seam fastballs as well as a good number of sinkers and curveballs, there was simply no answer to his sweeper. Gray threw 84 pitches through his seven-inning outing and turned to that particular pitch 19% of the time, generating whiffs to record seven of his nine strikeouts, including his first three against Connor Joe, Oneil Cruz and Ke'Bryan Hayes to escape a situation with runners on second and third in the first inning: 

"Well, I mean, you don't see Sonny Gray out of the zone very much. We saw him out of the zone the first two hitters, and then after that, you see why Sonny Gray's an ace to a staff, why he has the ability to execute," Shelton said. "Cutter got really good, breaking ball got really good. I mean a lot of swing and misses. Overall, he was just -- after the first two hitters -- extremely sharp."

A day after being held hitless through six innings by Miles Mikolas, the Pirates mustered four hits and a walk against Gray. They scored in the fifth inning when a Nick Gonzales double was followed by a one-out RBI single by Michael A. Taylor. Despite the one blemish on Gray's line, he managed to help limit the Pirates to two runs or less in back-to-back road games for the first time since May 30-June 1 in Oakland. 

"Obviously relied on the breaking ball a lot and the challenge there is just throwing multiple," said Henry Davis, who went 0 for 2 against Gray before homering off Andrew Kittredge in the eighth inning. "It's not like one shape. You can't anticipate it starting in one spot. Obviously a pretty good pitcher."

Hayes struck out twice while swinging through sweepers from Gray, who consistently went after hitters and attacked both righties and lefties with the slider variant. In the first, Hayes foul tipped one on the outside edge that landed in catcher Ivan Herrrera's glove. He then went chasing after one in the dirt for the final out of the sixth. 

"We probably as a collective, swung at some more pitches that we didn’t want to swing at," Hayes said. "He was locating his fastball away, low and away. Whenever sometimes he’s giving him an extra inch or two, sometimes you tend to expand. It’s just the nature of whenever they’re calling stuff, you’ve gotta protect. And then it leads to sometimes you’re chasing those pitches that are either down or a little bit more outside than what you normally would want to go after.”

The Pirates entered Wednesday having scored 135 runs since May 11. That total ranked them No. 3 in the National League and No. 8 among all teams in Major League Baseball. 

But over the past two days, a total of nine hits have resulted in four runs. While they managed to weather the storm and find a way to overcome squandered opportunities on Tuesday night, a blown chance with runners on first and second and nobody out in the first seemingly knocked the wind out of their sails. Gray retired 12 straight batters before Gonzales' fifth-inning double and left a runner stranded after another double by Cruz in the sixth. The Pirates had two hits in the final three innings, including Davis' homer, but couldn't generate much fluidity to make anything legitimately happen offensively. 

For the team to regain the offensive success they've been able to see for a significant portion of the last month, Hayes believes a more aggressive approach early in counts is needed. It's helped them in the past and might be a key to turning things around against Lance Lynn on Thursday afternoon. 

“I feel like tonight (Gray) was landing some pitches low and away. Got to just make an adjustment and look for that pitch to start off the at-bat," Hayes said. "That’s part of it. Sometimes it’s baseball. Sometimes you run into a really good pitcher. I mean, they have their stuff working that night. It’s gonna happen. I think just as the game went, just got to be able to make those adjustments.”

► MORE COVERAGE: Davis keeping things simple