When Bligh Madris saw the cutter coming, he didn’t hesitate to swing and send it to right field. What went down as a simple single in the seventh inning Friday night was more monumental to Madris.

For the Pittsburgh Pirates rookie outfielder, the hit not only marked the end of a 2-for-44 slump since July 28 but the beginning of a comeback in which he twice singled and scored the tying run in a 5-4 walk-off win over the Cincinnati Reds on Friday night at PNC Park.

In the sink-or-swim world of MLB, Madris was on the verge of drowning but wouldn’t stop kicking. With those hits, he came up for air. So his exhale was more of a sigh of relief, a sign that all of the time he has spent making adjustments at the plate finally started to show.

“The game’s been testing me lately,” said Madris, whose batting average has dropped 79 points to .180. “Mentally, it’s just sticking with my work every day and making sure I’m getting my early work in. I’m staying on top of it and not letting the results dictate my work ethic in any way. Just coming out every day and battling it, good or bad.”

It wasn’t lost on Madris that he was the one at bat Tuesday night when Boston Red Sox broadcaster Dennis Eckersley bristled at the Pirates for having a “no-name lineup” before calling the club a “hodgepodge of nothingness.”

The Pirates have played rookies on a regular basis this season, so their struggles at the plate have been magnified. Tucupita Marcano is batting .219, Cal Mitchell .204, Diego Castillo .201, Jack Suwinski and Oneil Cruz .198 and Madris .180. All six have had their moments of success, but their batting averages reflect how their flaws have been exposed.

Pirates manager Derek Shelton discussed how the team’s inexperience has affected situational hitting, acknowledging it takes time for young players who are still adjusting to playing at the major-league level to learn the traits of pitchers and figure out how to succeed against them.

“The one beautiful thing about our game and the one frustrating thing about our game if you’re a hitting coach is that you can never practice at that speed,” Shelton said. “It’s different than any other game in the world, that you’re not able to do that. That’s what takes more time and causes more challenge. When guys get it, it’s a lot of fun to watch. But the process of getting there sometimes can be frustrating.”

Madris has made adjustments in the batter’s box, too, shortening his stride and minimizing his leg kick, which he found was making him late. His focus is on swinging at pitches in the strike zone, reducing his chase rate and trying to work deeper into counts to draw more walks.

Studying scouting reports and analytics, which show the horizontal and vertical breaks on every pitch, Madris tries to re-enact the pitches in the batting cage but knows that Shelton is right: Nothing compares to the real thing. That requires Madris standing in the box, seeing the pitches in person so he can recognize it when he has runners in scoring position or is deep in the count, so he knows whether to swing or lay off.

“You try to train it as much as you can … but nothing does it justice until you take time to really see one in the box,” Madris said. “That’s been a love-hate relationship with me.”

The Pirates are showing patience during the trial-and-error phase with rookies like Madris, in hopes that they can figure it out instead of having to be demoted to the minors. The up-and-down nature of the game can shake a player’s confidence, but there is no simulating major-league pitching in the minors. That’s why Pirates general manager Ben Cherington said he treats such decisions on a case-by-case basis.

“I don’t think the outcomes by themselves are discouraging,” Cherington said. “We know that that’s going to happen sometimes with young players. … So we expect some of those struggles, frankly, when young position players come up. What we look for is how they’re responding to it.”

That’s where Madris has tried to keep a positive attitude, knowing it’s not uncommon for players to have a tough transition from Triple-A to the majors, where a drastic difference is in how pitchers have more movement on their fastballs and pinpoint location on their breaking balls. Rookies have to learn a pitcher’s repertoire and tendencies, what type of pitches they prefer and where in the count they throw them.

“That’s the dance of the game,” Pirates center fielder Bryan Reynolds said. “Usually when you’re first called up, you just get fed heaters to see if you can hit that. Then they start trying different things. It’s just going with the ebbs and flows of what the pitchers are going to do to you. That’s just part of the game: learning how to make adjustments. Everybody here has the talent to do it. Progress doesn’t happen overnight like some people want it to.”

Madris was searching for heaters in his first stint with the Pirates in late June, when he had three hits in his big-league debut, homered in his second game and had another three-hit performance at Tampa Bay in his fifth game. Where Madris was batting .259 (14 for 54) in his first 15 games, pitchers attacked him with a different approach after he was recalled from Indianapolis in late July.

“I’m seeing a lot of breaking stuff earlier in the count, kind of pitching backwards,” Madris said. “I like hitting the heater, but it’s tough when you don’t see a lot of them.”

It didn’t help that, in his first six games back, Madris faced three of the top five finishers in NL Cy Young voting last year. First, the Pirates faced runner-up Zack Wheeler, Ranger Suarez and Aaron Nola in the Philadelphia Phillies series, then Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta and Brandon Woodruff (who finished fifth) in the Milwaukee Brewers series.

Madris shook his head while reflecting on seeing Burnes’ cutter, the changeups of Devin Williams and Logan Webb and the sinker of Camilo Doval for the first time. He marvels at how none of the pitchers’ fastballs look the same, at how their extensions can make a 98 mph fastball look like one that touches triple digits.

“You see a lot of stuff here that you don’t see in the minor leagues,” Madris said. “Guys have better breaking ball stuff, and they land it in zone whenever they want. I’m just learning how to stick to the zone and stay stubborn to your approach. That’s the biggest thing I’ve been learning in the big leagues this past month, trying to figure out how they’re attacking me, figuring out their tendencies and my weaknesses: How can I combat their attack plan with my attack plan?”

It doesn’t help the 26-year-old Madris that he lost a year of development when the minor-league season was canceled in 2020. Or that he’s learning a new position by playing first base. Or that some of his hardest hits have been directly at a defense shifted to the left-handed hitter’s pull side. Madris produced the fourth-hardest hit of the game with a 106.8 mph exit velocity Wednesday against Boston, but it was a lineout to second baseman Christian Arroyo, stationed in shallow right field.

“The best thing I can do every single day that I’m here, whether I’m playing or not playing,” Madris said, “is just watch the game to see and learn what guys are going to do.”

That all came to fruition Friday night, when Madris was robbed of a broken-bat single on a spectacular catch by Reds center fielder Albert Almora Jr. in his first at-bat. Madris learned from his second at-bat, when he had a 3-0 count and Graham Ashcraft threw two cutters followed by two sliders to get Madris looking at a called third strike.

Madris recognized that cutter in the seventh, smacking the first pitch at a 105.3 mph exit velocity for a single to right and scoring on Ben Gamel’s single to tie it at 3-3. In the ninth, Madris fouled off three of the first four pitches he saw, then hit Joel Kuhnel’s 1-2 slider to right for a single and scored the tying run on Kevin Newman’s double.

“I’m trying to make those adjustments as I’m learning every pitcher in this league,” Madris said. “It’s different every night, so that’s a constant challenge. It’s been challenging, but it’s been a lot of fun.”

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