Pittsburgh Pirates: Trevor Cahill Struggles as the Pirates lose 7-1

Following a 7-1 loss on Saturday night against the Brewers the Pittsburgh Pirates are now 6-9 this season

After an impressive win from the Pittsburgh Pirates and JT Brubaker they were looking to take game two Saturday night. Trevor Cahill took the bump against Milwaukee’s Brett Anderson. Unfortunately, things went south in a hurry for Cahill.

Following the 7-1 loss, the Pittsburgh Pirates are now a nice 6-9 on the season. They will not look to take this series on Sunday afternoon in the rubber match.

Trevor Cahill

Cahill was looking to continue what he did against the Padres in his last start when he went 5 strong innings with 8 strikeouts and allowing just 1 run. His confidence was short lived tonight, giving up 5 runs in the 1st inning and allowing nine batters to come to the plate.

His 2nd inning of work wasn’t much better, giving up another two runs, and we could see the frustration start to boil over with Cahill at this point.

If we saw the Trevor Cahill that showed up in the 3rd and 4th inning, we could be talking about a completely different game. As AT&T SportsNet analyst Matt Capps mentioned Cahill’s stuff on Saturday night wasn’t bad, he just couldn’t locate, plus he was a victim of some bad luck. I think you will see outings like this more times than not from Cahill, and you will see him in a different uniform next year.

Cahill’s final line read as such: 4 innings, 8 hits, 7 runs, 1 walk and 5 strikeouts. We would see the bullpen yet again get in the majority of the work tonight, and that is something you don’t want to see with an early game tomorrow.

The Bullpen

Sean Poppen would make his regular season debut after appearing in 6 games with the Minnesota Twins in 2020. Poppen looked fairly sharp tonight, going 2 innings, which were both scoreless frames. He hit a batter and gave up two hits, but I liked his breaking ball and the 95 MPH fastball accompanied by it, resulting in two punchouts with said combo.

Clay Holmes would be the next arm to try and keep the score where it was. Holmes last outing, he went 1.2 innings and looked very clean in a game that wasn’t much different than tonight’s. Holmes looked extremely dialed in, and if you didn’t look at the score, you’d think it was a scoreless game the way he looked on the mound. Holmes pitched two scoreless frames and struck out two.

The Bats

After several hot starts with the bats, the Pittsburgh Pirates had a very mild/sub-average night. Bryan Reynolds and Adam Frazier led the way tonight with a combined four hits out of the seven, the Pirates could muster up. Phillip Evans seems to have come back down to earth, going 0-4 tonight, and is now 1-9 on the series.

The Pirates could only manage to score one run against these very good Brewers pitchers, and none were better than Brett Anderson, going 7 innings, and we saw that sinkerball moving tonight. The Pirates lost 7-1 and now look to take the Sunday afternoon rubber match going up against Freddie Peralta and these pesky Brewers.

Final Thoughts

• Trevor Cahill is just here to eat innings and give you a decent start every once in a while
• Bryan Reynolds looks good so far this season
• Phillip Evans is human
• The bullpen has looked phenomenal this season, considering the expectations
• Even though the Pirates lost by a lot of runs, it’s just one game