Pittsburgh Pirates: Struggles Against the Brewers Continue & More Series Takeaways

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The Pittsburgh Pirates continue to struggle mightily against the Milwaukee Brewers, a mixed bag of results for the Young Bucs, and more takeaways from the series loss

Overall, it was a good homestand for the Pittsburgh Pirates. A 4-2 homestand is always a successful one, especially when a team went into that homestand having lost 12 of their previous 13 games. However, this homestand did feel like a bit of a letdown.

After winning the first four games it felt like the Pirates should be able to at least go 5-1. Not only did that not happen, but by losing the final two games of the homestand they dropped an important series agaisnt the National League Central leading Milwaukee Brewers.

After dropping two of three to the Brewers the Pirates are now 39-44 on the season, sitting 5.5 games behind the Brewers and Cincinnati Reds in the NL Central. They are now 11-13-1 in series played this season.

Next up for the Pirates is a challenging seven-game road trip against two of the best teams in the National League - the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks. Before looking ahead to this road trip let's take one more look back at the series loss against the Brewers with some series takeaways.

Up and down series for the Young Bucs

As one would expect for young players, the team's contingent of Young Bucs had some success and some struggles in the series. For some of these players, the entire series was a bit of a rollercoaster ride.

Reliever Carmen Mlodzinski sneakily played a huge role in Friday's victory pitching 2 scoreless innings of relief to keep the Pirates within striking distance as the offense began to rally. Mlodzinski allowed a hit and issued a walk in an inning of work on Sunday, but the 2 runs he allowed were unearned due to a Ryan Borucki throwing error.

Infielder Nick Gonzales had the best series of any of the Young Bucs. Gonzales doubled in a pair of runs on Friday night and scored a run. After a day off on Saturday, Gonzales had a big game on Sunday recording a pair of hits including his 2nd career home run.

However, as you would expect for young players, there were some struggles in the series as well.

Henry Davis looked human in the series recording just one hit, but he drew an important walk during Friday night's comeback. He scored a run in both Friday and Saturday's games and had a hard-hit fly ball out to the warning track in his lone at-bat on Sunday.

Johan Oviedo struggled mightily on Saturday afternoon turning in one of the worst starts he has had since joining the Pirates. Dauri Moreta had an up-and-down series. Friday night he was charged with a run and allowed a pair of inherited runners to score. Then on Sunday, with runners on the corners and just one out he induced a pop out followed by a strikeout to escape the jam unscathed.

Making three more starts at third base Jared Triolo had a poor series. At the plate he was just 1-for-11 with a walk, a double, and he struck out four times. He also committed his first career error in Sunday's loss.

Pirates struggles against the Brewers continue

For so many years Miller Park, now known as American Family Field, was a house of horrors for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Many years these struggles with the Brewers have also spilled over to PNC Park, that has been the case thus far in 2023.

The Pirates have only played two series against the Brewers so far this season. They were swept in Milwaukee and now have dropped two of three in Pittsburgh, putting the Pirates at 1-5 on the season against the Brewers.

This continues a recent trend of struggles. Pittsburgh went 8-11 against Milwaukee last season, 5-14 in 2021, 5-5 in 2020, and 4-15 in 2019. That's 23-50 against the Brewers the past five seasons. Since the two teams first played in 1997 the Pirates have won the season series against the Brewers just eight times.

All-time the Pirates are 183-238 against the Brewers. While a lot things change from one season to the next in baseball one thing that will seemingly never change is the Pirates struggling against the Brewers. It's starting to teeter on death and taxes territory.

A mostly good series with runners in scoring position

One of the most frustrating parts of the series loss for the Pirates is that they actually overcame one of their biggest issues of late. In recent weeks hitting with runners in scoring position has been a major problem, but the team hit .354 with RISP against Milwaukee.

Friday night we won't really touch on since the team rallied to win on Carlos Santana's walk off home run. Saturday afternoon the Bucs went 5-for-9 with RISP and left only three runners on base. However, between failing to get a hit until the 6th inning and the pitching imploding, the strong performance with RISP wasn't enough.

Sunday afternoon, however, the RISP woes returned and that played a role in the Bucs dropping the series finale and in turn the series. Pirate batters were just 1-for-7 with RISP in Sunday's 6-3 loss and left six runners on base.

While they hit poorly with RISP on Sunday, poor performance with RISP throughout the series was not a contributing factor to a series loss the way it has been recently. With even remotely competent pitching on Saturday the Bucs likely would have still won that game. Even with the poor performance with RISP on Sunday, with better defense and less free base runners allowed by the pitching staff, they still could have walked away victorious.

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