Pittsburgh Pirates News: Jerad Eickhoff Makes History

The Pittsburgh Pirates decided to call up a minor league veteran to make a start on Wednesday.  He ended up making history in his start.

Well, it was a blowout loss to end a series with the Cubs.  The Pittsburgh Pirates more or less blew the Cubs out in the first two games of the series.  Last night, was expected to be a tough game for the Bucs, after all,

they are a losing Baseball Club.  The Bucs were actually being spotted +1.5 runs going into the contest, which is saying a lot being they were the home team.

That was because the Pittsburgh Pirates had to recall a minor league veteran pitcher.  Jerad Eickhoff was called up from Triple-A to make a spot start with Zach Thompson needing to miss a start.  Thompson was placed on the Injury List with what is being described as a “sore nerve in his right forearm”.

Thompson has had much better results than what the Pittsburgh Pirates would get from Jerad Eickhoff.  In fact, the Bucs would actually get a historic performance from Eickhoff.  Unfortunately, his historical start was not on the good side of things:

Yes, Eickhoff is the first pitcher EVER to get clobbered for a double-digit run total in their team debut.  Obviously, there were not super high expectations for the 31-year-old, but no one expected such a poor outing.  He did get through 4.1 innings of work, which put his ERA at 20.77.  However, there is even more to this story:

So not only did he have a historical debut but he also made some more history in his last two starts combined.  It has been over 80 years since something like this happened.  It is actually surprising that John Van Benschoten never accomplished this in his tenure with the Bucs.

Another week and Pittsburgh Pirates fans are given yet another head-shaking moment.  There is better Baseball on the horizon, fans are seeing that.  However, it will not happen overnight and the Organization has a ways to go before being truly competitive.  Giving Eickhoff a start and allowing him to go as long as he did was about eating innings for a losing team.  Hopefully, next time the club brings up a pitching prospect who potentially has a future with the Club.