Pirates go quietly in twinbill against Mets
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If the Pittsburgh Pirates were going to split their doubleheader with the New York Mets, they needed to fare better against the starting pitcher in the nightcap than they did in the matinee.
And with a two-time NL Cy Young Award winner on the mound for the Mets, the odds of that happening were nearly impossible.
After Chris Bassitt struck out 10 Pirates in a 5-1 win Wednesday afternoon, Jacob deGrom whiffed eight more in tossing seven shutout innings in a 10-0 win in the nightcap at PNC Park.
It was the 15th shutout of the season for the Pirates, who allowed 10 or more runs for the 12th time and lost by double digits for the eighth time.
The Pirates got into early deficits after the Mets had four-run innings in each game, scoring on back-to-back home runs off Bryse Wilson in the fourth inning of the first game and erratic pitching by Johan Oviedo in the second inning of the second game.
“You give up four runs and you face deGrom, you’re really putting yourself in a hole,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “He was good. He executed the fastball. The fastball was really good, and the slider was why he’s one of the best pitchers in the game. So, yeah, we definitely can’t spot people.”
Where deGrom allowed only three hits and one walk while striking out eight on 91 pitches in seven innings, Oviedo had a rough outing in his second start for the Pirates.
Working on a new grip on his fastball, the right-hander walked five of the 11 batters he faced, including three consecutive with two outs in the second inning and Brandon Nimmo with the bases loaded for a 1-0 Mets lead. It only went downhill from there. Eduardo Escobar scored on a wild pitch to make it 2-0. After Pete Alonso drew a walk — he didn’t even realize it was a full count — on Oviedo’s 57th pitch, Shelton turned to lefty Eric Stout. Francisco Lindor promptly smacked a two-run double to right off Stout for a 4-0 Mets lead.
“One of my goals today was to try to be as good as he is,” Oviedo said of deGrom. “I tried to put my plan in the first place and try development. Of course, I want to be next to him and go seven, but I tried to put my priorities first and the priority is the team first. Just try to do what I can control and that was it.”
The Mets added two more runs against Zach Thompson in the third, when Lindor doubled off Bryan Reynolds’ glove in deep center to score James McCann to make it 5-0 and Jeff McNeil singled to right to score Alonso and Lindor for a 7-0 lead.
Tyler Beede gave up back-to-back doubles to Mark Canha and Tyler Naquin to start the seventh, and Escobar followed with a single to score Naquin to run it to 9-0. The Mets added another run in the eighth, when Daniel Vogelbach singled to score McNeil for a 10-0 lead.
Searching for positive, Shelton was impressed with how Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds started by hitting singles in the first inning before deGrom locked in and retired the next 12 batters before walking Jack Suwinski in the fifth. Reynolds singled again in the sixth.
“As screwed up as it sounds, you pick the small victories, because, I mean, the slider was electric,” Shelton said. “Hopefully, we don’t see many guys that throw that. So we have to build off some of those things. When you have a guy like him that’s such an outlier, sometimes you realize you’re facing one of the best pitchers in baseball.”
The Pirates used righty reliever Duane Underwood Jr. as an opener in the first game before turning to Wilson for the next six innings. The move backfired when Underwood gave up a leadoff single to Nimmo, who reached on a chopper to third, then advanced to third on Alonso’s double to left and scored on a sacrifice fly by McNeil to give the Mets a 1-0 lead.
“With the matchups and what we were going to do with Wilson in terms of times through, we just thought we had a good matchup,” Shelton said. “Duane had one ball that was hit hard. The Alonso ball was hit hard. Nimmo hit the ball off the end of the bat to start it. I thought he did a good job. He threw the ball on the plate. He just made one bat pitch.”
Wilson took over in the second and gave up four runs on seven hits, becoming the eighth Pirates pitcher to throw six innings of relief in franchise history and the first since lefty Kris Johnson did so in his major league debut on Aug. 18, 2013 against Arizona.
Wilson gave up a two-out single to Escobar and a double to Tomas Nido before getting Nimmo to fly out to right in the second. After a 1-2-3 third, Wilson encountered more trouble in a four-run fourth that saw the Mets put four consecutive batters on base.
“It’s kind of disappointing. Keep it together and pitch well then you get a four-batter stretch and they get four runs,” Wilson said. “It’s a little frustrating when that happens. I just got to look at it, take the positives out of it and move on.”
It started when former Pirates desiganted hitter Vogelbach, who was traded to the Mets following the All-Star break in late July for righty reliever Colin Holderman, hit a leadoff bloop single to center. Wilson then hit Canha with a pitch. That put runners on first and second for Naquin, who hit a 400-foot, three-run shot into the visiting bullpen in left-center for his 11th home run and a 4-0 lead.
Escobar followed by sending a 2-1 slider over the Clemente Wall in right field for his 15th homer to make it 5-0. It marked the fifth time this season the Mets have hit back-to-back homers, the first since Starling Marte and Lindor did so on off Jake Odorizzi in the first inning of a 9-7 win over the Atlanta Braves on Aug. 17.
“The hit-by-pitch to Canha was the one that hurt us,” Shelton said. “We get the three-run homer after that. That’s just something that we have to continue to work on with him is minimizing that inning.”
The Pirates had no answer for Bassitt (13-7), who allowed only two baserunners through the first five innings on singles by Cal Mitchell in the second and Cruz in the fourth. Bassitt struck out the side in the fifth, getting Mitchell and Michael Chavis swinging at curveballs and Tucupita Marcano at a cutter.
“I thought he did a good job,” Shelton said. “He threw some cutters early on that backed up, which actually ended up giving us some trouble. I thought he threw the ball well. He executed. We had some trouble with the curveball. He really executed and did a good job with it, kind of kept us off balance. As the game went on, we did a better job of laying off it.”
Finally, Greg Allen started the sixth inning with a double down the right field line, becoming the first Pirates player to reach second base, and scored on Tyler Heineman’s single to right to make it 5-1. With runners on first and second and a full count, Bassitt got Jack Suwinski to fly out to right to end the inning.
Chavis hit a one-out double off the bottom of the left-field wall in the seventh but Bassitt got Marcano to ground out and froze Allen with a 94-mph four-seamer for his 10th strikeout on his 101st pitch. Bassitt allowed one run on five hits and one walk.
“That’s the thing,” Shelton said. “We have to minimize those bad hitters and … we have to keep the ball in the yard.”