Pittsburgh Pirates homestand report card for week of 5/25-5/30

The Pittsburgh Pirates’ most recent homestand started and ended on a positive note, but didn’t have a lot of highs in between.

The six-game stretch with divisional opponents St. Louis and Chicago began Friday night with a stellar season debut by Joe Musgrove and ended last night with another strong performance by Musgrove. The four games in between, however, were brutal.

The Bucs lost the last two games of the Cardinals series and the first two of the Cubs’ series. The four-game skid featured two blown leads by the bullpen and a questionable slide by Anthony Rizzo that left many fans wondering if the good times experienced in April and early May were eroding.

The Bucs ended the stretch with a 2-4 record the could – and honestly should – have been a 4-2 record. Here is a more detailed breakdown of what the Pirates did right, and wrong, over this past week.

Starting pitching – the good

Musgrove couldn’t have had a much better start to his Pirates career. The former Houston Astro pitched seven shutout innings Friday night– and got his first Major League hit as well– to lead the Bucs to a much needed 8-1 win over the Cardinals. Last night, he allowed just one run over seven innings, leading the Bucs to another much needed win, this time by a score of 2-1, and also provided a spark with his hard slide on Cubs second baseman Javy Baez.

Sunday afternoon, Jameson Taillon finally pitched like the Pirates need him to. For six innings, Taillon was in control, using his slider effectively. Although the bullpen ultimately failed him, Sunday can still serve as a launching pad for the Pirates’ most important starter.

Starting pitching – the bad

Trevor Williams looks like he might be coming back down to earth, and the question of who will emerge as the anchor of this staff remains unanswered. The problem with the Pirates starting rotation is that while nobody, with the possible exception of Ivan Nova, has been particularly bad this season, by the same token, no one on the staff has stepped up as “the man”.

Taillon’s last start was encouraging, and Musgrove and rookie Nick Kingham could turn out to be studs. For right now, however, as hard as the bullpen has been trying lately, the starting rotation is the weak point of this team. While this homestand wasn’t awful from a starting pitching standpoint, the staff didn’t exactly turn the corner, either

Bullpen – the good

Tyler Glasnow is thriving in the ‘pen. The tall fireballer was lights out in his appearances Saturday and Tuesday night and should see time in more high-leverage situations going forward. Kyle Crick looked comfortable in the setup role last night, and could see some time in the eighth inning while Edgar Santana and Michael Feliz figure things out. Aside from those two things, it’s hard to find positives out of the bullpen at the moment.

Bullpen – the bad

For most of this season, the ‘pen has been awesome.  Santana,  Feliz and Richard Rodriguez have all shown flashes of brilliance over the first two months. This week, however, they stunk, and there’s no way to sugarcoat that.

The bullpen blew two games that should have been in the win column, with Feliz and Felipe Vazquez falling apart Sunday afternoon, and Santana doing the same Tuesday night. I’m not ready to dismiss this unit as unreliable yet, and I think it would be premature to do so. But until most of these relievers establish themselves as being capable for at least a full season, there will be doubt, and rightfully so. This unit has the talent to be a strong point of this team, but the consistency just hasn’t shown up yet.

All of that said, Vazquez bounced back with scoreless 9th innings on Tuesday and Wednesday night which included a save on Wednesday.

Overall

This week’s home stand and the six games that preceded it an indicator of what the rest of the season is going to be like? Who knows. One thing that’s for certain is that the Pirates aren’t playing good baseball.

Now there are 107 games left, so it’s still difficult to make much out of anything. It;s obvious that the Pirates need to step it up, however. Whether that be from their big guns like Bell and Polanco, or some of their more unheralded players like Musgrove and Colin Moran, things need to change. Hopefully, the series finale against Chicago will serve as a starting point.

The road won’t get any easier with four games at Busch Stadium coming up. Once again, the Bucs have a chance to show that they might be different from the disappointments of the 2016 and 17 teams. Hopefully, unlike this past homestand, they don’t let an opportunity slip through the cracks.