Pirates loss to Cardinals puts Don Kelly back in fans’ crosshairs

Don Kelly was always going to wear this one. When a manager walks to the mound in the sixth inning, takes the ball from a veteran starter at 83 pitches and watches the next batter send a go-ahead homer into the seats, the second-guessing is inevitable.

That is exactly what happened in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 9-6 extra-inning loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, a game that dropped them back to .500 and put Kelly right back in the crosshairs of an increasingly frustrated fan base.

But the more uncomfortable question here is whether the criticism is actually fair.

On the surface, pulling Mitch Keller after 5 2/3 innings looked overly aggressive. Keller had two outs, had held Nolan Gorman hitless in two at-bats and was not exactly running on fumes. For a team whose bullpen has been shaky lately, asking Keller to get one more out felt reasonable.

Kelly’s logic, though, was not indefensible. Gorman had done damage against Keller before, with three career homers off him. Evan Sisk had been dominant against left-handed hitters and had not allowed an extra-base hit to a lefty all season.

Kelly was playing the matchup. It just failed spectacularly — and that is where the frustration gets complicated.

Don Kelly deserves scrutiny for some — but not all — decisions in Pirates' loss to Cardinals

Last week, fans were irritated that Kelly stuck with Keller too long against the Colorado Rockies instead of going to the bullpen. This time, he went to the bullpen earlier and got burned anyway. At some point, the players have to execute. Sisk had the matchup. He simply missed, and Gorman punished him.

That does not mean Kelly gets a free pass for the entire night. The Jared Triolo/Jake Mangum sequence in right field was clunky. If Mangum was going to hit for Triolo in the 10th, it is fair to wonder why he was not simply in right field to begin the ninth.

The bigger gripe came in the ninth, when Marcell Ozuna hit with the bases loaded and nobody out while Spencer Horwitz remained on the bench. Ozuna, carrying a .179 average and .580 OPS, rolled into a double play. Yes, a run scored. Yes, Horwitz later tied the game with an RBI single. But the Pirates may have wasted their best chance to win by prioritizing getting Ozuna going over giving the at-bat to the better hitter in that moment.

The Keller decision was defensible process with brutal results, but the Ozuna decision felt more like stubborn hope. Kelly can say Ozuna is a professional hitter, and he is. But the Pirates are not in a position to manage around reputations. They need wins.

So, yes, Kelly deserves scrutiny. But not every failed move is automatically a bad one. Sometimes the matchup is right and the pitch is wrong. Sometimes the manager makes a debatable call and the player makes it look worse.

The problem for Kelly is that when a team loses four straight, nuance rarely survives the final score.

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