PHOENIX -- As Quinn Priester jogged his way in from the Pirates' bullpen Saturday night, his task was straightforward: Keep some newfound momentum on the side of the visitors.
The Pirates' offense had just come alive for a three-run top of the fifth inning to tie the game when Priester was called upon in hopes of providing multiple innings in relief. A pitcher known for letting troublesome situations spiral at times, Priester allowed too many baserunners to reach freely in addition to serving up big hits throughout two particularly ineffective innings in the Pirates' 9-5 loss to the Diamondbacks at Chase Field.
"I think that's the thing that we've seen from him as a starter, too," Derek Shelton said of Priester, who has transitioned into becoming more of a bulk reliever since returning from the injured list on July 9. "It's something we have to continue to work on. It's the situation of it can't be free bases. If it's hits, but again, we had the hit by pitch. We had a four-pitch walk. We have to stay away from guys getting free bases."
Priester began the fifth by giving up a single to Jake McCarthy before striking Eugenio Suarez with a first-pitch sinker and walking Corbin Carroll on four pitches to load the bases. Geraldo Perdomo and Ketel Marte each contributed with sacrifice flies to put Arizona ahead 6-4, but that's not where things ended for Priester.
The sixth began the same way, as Lourdes Gurriel Jr. led things off with a single and Christian Walker was hit by a 1-2 sinker. This time, though, Joc Pederson needed one swing of the bat to plate two runs, delivering with a triple down the right-field line to make it an 8-5 game:
RUN, JOC, RUN! pic.twitter.com/tJvTvHDXer
— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) July 28, 2024
Pederson later scored on another single by McCarthy to conclude the scoring against Priester, who ended up allowing five earned runs on five hits with a walk and two strikeouts in four innings. He threw 45 of 65 pitches for strikes.
"He's gotta attack the zone. That's the biggest thing," Shelton said. "That's the biggest way forward for him as a major-league pitcher."
While one may question Shelton's thought process in wanting to stick with Priester after a lackluster showing in the fifth, he stood by his decision considering length was needed with Marco Gonzales and Dennis Santana combining to cover four innings.
"He's our length guy. He's a guy that's been a starter. We did a good job coming back and tying the game and needed probably another inning out of him clean, and then we get to our leverage guys," Shelton said. "But when you're in that role, you have to be able to cover multiple innings. Then we got through it, then we got down. And with the fact that he has started, he was able to finish the last two innings. He actually threw the ball well the last two innings."
Priester, who has now allowed eight runs over 13 innings since his return to the big-league club, didn't mince words when discussing this particular performance. He was accountable for the struggles he encountered and knows he has to work to be better moving forward.
"Obviously it came out less than good, and that needs to get better," Priester said. "That’s unacceptable, especially with where we’re at in the season. I expect a lot more out of myself and I expect to perform better for the guys next to me. That’s unacceptable and we’re going to work to get that better.”
Priester had only thrown three innings over a 12-day span entering Saturday, but he doesn't see the lack of work as having anything to do with this latest poor performance.
“There’s no excuses for what happened. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if I pitched yesterday or if I pitched a month ago, we have to go out and win games right now and I didn’t do a good enough job of that," Priester said. "Just continue to get better, learn from this today and move forward.”
If he's looking to build off of something more encouraging, Priester can look back at what he did over his last two innings of work. He utilized every pitch in his arsenal, showed trust in his stuff and executed pitches in retiring nine of the final 10 batters he faced.
“First thing is assessing what we did do poorly, what kind of was going wrong early versus late because it did clean itself up," Priester said. "Just being able to focus on the good and repeating the good.”
