The Pittsburgh Pirates have made a change to their plans for Friday night’s starting pitcher
On Thursday, the Pittsburgh Pirates added right-handed pitcher Alex McRae to their active roster as part of their September call ups. Now, due to injury, McRae will make his second MLB start of the season and of his career on Friday night.
Originally, Joe Msugrove was scheduled to start on Friday night. However, this is no longer the case. Due to foot discomfort Musgrove has been scratched for McRae.
Musgrove has pitched 154 1/3 innings this season in 29 games, 28 of which have been starts. All of these are new career highs for Musgrove. In these 154 1/3 innings of work Musgrove owns a 5.4% walk rate, 20.8% strikeout rate, a 4.67 ERA, and a 4.04 FIP. As his new career best 2.7 fWAR indicates, Musgrove has pitched better than his ERA would indicate this season.
As for McRae, he has made one start for the Pirates this season and has pitched in a total of six games. McRae has pitched 15 1/3 innings in these six outings and has struggled.
McRae has allowed 22 hits, six home runs, he’s walked nine batters, and hit a pair of batters in his 15 1/3 innings of work. This has led to him owning a 9.98 ERA and an 8.50 FIP for the Pirates. McRae has also struggled at Triple-A this season where he posted a 5.20 ERA and a 5.39 FIP in 114 1/3 innings pitched in his 22 starts.
Hopefully, Musgrove will miss just this one start. Musgrove will be a big part of the Pirate starting rotation in 2020 and beyond, so it would be great to see Musgrove have the opportunity to make two or three more strong starts before the end of the 2019 season.