Pittsburgh Pirates Blown Out In Series Opener vs Seattle Mariners

The Pittsburgh Pirates kicked off their final interleague series of the 2019 season with a loss on Tuesday night

After a tumultuous day at PNC Park that saw Pittsburgh Pirates All-Star closer Felipe Vazquez arrested on multiple disturbing charges, the team still had a game to play. After all of the chaos of the afternoon’s news, the Pirates welcomed the Seattle Mariners to PNC Park for the first of a three-game series.

The Pirates kicked off their final interleague series of the season with a 6-0 loss against the Mariners. With the loss, the Pirates are now 21 games under .500 on the season at 65-86. This includes being an abysmal 22-41 since the All-Star Break.

Mitch Keller started for the Pirates and turned in a strong start. In his 10th career start Keller allowed just 2 runs on six hits, two walks, no home runs, and he struck out seven in 5 innings of work. The big knock on Keller Tuesday night was only going 5 innings. This was due to him needing to throw 95 pitches to get through these 5 innings of work.

All in all it was a strong start for Keller. His fastball played well and his slider had good bite to it. His slider/curveball combo had the strikeout pitch working for Keller. It would be great to see Keller turn in another strong start or two before the end of the season to build confidence heading into 2020 when he will be counted upon to play a big role for the Pirates.

With the Pirates trailing 2-0, Michael Feliz took over for Keller in the 6th inning. Feliz, who has been excellent for the most part this season, recorded a strikeout in his inning of work. However, this came after he allowed back-to-back home runs to start the inning. This made the Pirate hole 4-0.

Seattle’s lead would then grow to 6-0 in the 7th inning when Williams Jerez allowed a pair of runs. Clay Holmes then used a 1-6-3 double play to clean up a lead off walk while pitching a scoreless 8th inning for the Bucs. Wei-Chung Wang and Parker Markel teamed up to toss a scoreless 9th inning.

For the Mariners, ex-Cardinal Marco Gonzales got the start and continued what has been a strong 2019 campaign. In 7 scoreless innings of work the southpaw allowed six hits, he did not walk a batter, and he struck out four.

The Mariner bullpen then pitched a pair of scoreless innings to close out the 6-0 Pirate loss.

The second game of this series is scheduled for 7:05 on Wednesday evening. Dario Agrazal (4.91 ERA, 6.01 FIP) will make the start for the Pirates, while the Mariners will counter with Justin Dunn, who has pitched just 2/3 of an inning in his MLB career, as an opener. When Dunn’s outing ends, veteran lefty Tommy Milone (4.93 ERA, 5.03 FIP) will take over for Seattle.