Errors, sloppy play pile up in ugly loss to Reds

On a day when the Pirates honored three of the organization's legends, the play on the field didn't reflect the energy that was brought into PNC Park on Saturday.

It actually may have embarrassed it.

After Jake Woodford gifted the Reds four first-inning runs, mistakes piled up throughout the evening, leading to a 10-2 loss in front of a crowd of 38,137.

While the defense didn't provide the pitching staff with any support on multiple occasions, the Reds jumped on Woodford early. However, two of those runs were walks and two more came around to score when Spencer Steer knocked a line-drive double to left field.

"I was fighting myself a lot out there, I think," Woodford said. "But they're a scrappy lineup. They're good. Just wasn't executing enough pitches, wasn't making adjustments quick enough. The line speaks for itself."

That line on this night was 3 1/3 innings, seven hits, seven earned runs, three walks and three strikeouts. But Woodford's line wasn't the story as the Pirates allowed mistakes of all kinds to pile up.

In the top of the fourth inning, after the Reds had already taken a 5-2 lead, Elly De La Cruz sent a ball to Bryan De La Cruz in right field. Will Benson scored from second on the play. But instead of throwing to second to cut the runner off, Bryan De La Cruz tried to throw Jonathan India out at third, allowing Elly De La Cruz to advance to second.

Here take a look:

It was one of two throwing mistakes Bryan De La Cruz made on this night and Derek Shelton said it was one piece of a bad defensive night all around.

"He made two poor decisions today, and that's something we'll talk about," Shelton said. "We had a tough game defensively today. That's something we have to do better. Overall he's done a good job, he just had a tough game today." 

That mistake came to hurt the Pirates a few plays later as a wild pitch got away from Joey Bart which ignited a sequence that allowed De La Cruz to score from second. Rather than try to describe it, I'll just leave this here:

During the next half inning, Oneil Cruz looked to ignite a rally after hitting a ground-rule double to the notch in left center. But, he erased that accomplishment just moments later when he tried to advance to third on Bart's dribbler to third base. 

Santiago Espinal fielded the ball cleanly and tagged out Cruz easily. When I asked Shelton about the play he said he talked to Cruz, "but like I said, we didn't play good baseball tonight. We made base running mistakes, we made defensive mistakes, we just didn't play well."

Lastly, in the top of the sixth inning, After Ben Heller set down the first two batters of the inning, an India single to De La Cruz turned into a double after both De La Cruz and Ji Hwan Bae committed errors trying to corral the ball. Just watch how it played out:

India then scored on an Elly De La Cruz double before Tyler Stephenson drove in the Reds' 10th run of the night with a single to center field.

On a night where defensive mistakes piled up and mental errors were made consistently, the only run production the Pirates could muster was a Rowdy Tellez two-run shot into the Allegheny River off the bounce.

But that wouldn't be enough. The mistakes were made. The effort was dismal at times and as Woodford put it: "Just one of those days where it was bad, all the way around."

Woodford was referring to his performance in this instance, but it could describe the loss as a whole.

It was an ugly one all the way around.