Pittsburgh Pirates: Unsung Bullpen Heroes, Key Heating Up, Takeaways From Sweeping Cardinals

Ke'Bryan Hayes is heating up, unsung bullpen heroes step up, and more takeaways from the Pittbsurgh Pirates sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals

Baseball seaons can have a lot of ebbs and flows. For the Pittsburh Pirates, it did not take long to experience that in the 2023 season. After racing out to a 20-8 start, giving them the best record in the National League, the teamm plummeted to 26-27. This included entering the final series of May without a single series victory for the month.

Well, to the team's credit, they have responded. After winning the final two games of their series in San Francisco against the Giants, they came out this weekend and swept the St. Louis Cardinals at PNC Park.

With this series sweep, the Pirates have now won five games in a row to get to 31-27 on the season. This also makes them 9-7-1 in the 17 series that they have played this season. It appears the team is now bouncing back from their May woes.

Next up for the Pirates is a three-game series at home agaisnt the Oakland A's. Before we look ahead to that series, let's take one more look back at their series sweep of the Cardinals. Here are takeaways from the Bucs sweeping the Red Birds.

A werid series for the starting rotation

The Pirate starting rotation has mostly been fine this season. However, injuries are starting to pile up and there have been some ineffectiveness of late. As for this series, it was certainly a strange one for their starting pitchers.

Friday night Roansy Contreras pitched just 4 innings, but he pitched extremely well in 3.2 of these 4 innings. The problem is with two outs in the 3rd inning Contreras allowed five straight hits, including a pair of home runs, leading to all 5 runs the Cardinals scored in game one.

Typically starts that are 4 innings and see a pitcher allow 5 runs are very poor starts. 5 runs in 4 innings did not tell the full story for Contreras, though. Otuside of that five batter stretch in the 3rd inning, Contreras allowed just two hits and struck out six batters in 3.2 innings of work. It was certainly a weird start.

Saturday afternoon Luis Ortiz appeared to be on his way to a strong start. Through 2 innings his slider was working and the only hard contact he allowed was a solo home run by Willson Contreras. However, an hour long rain delay caused Ortiz's day to end after just 2 innings pitched.

Veteran lefty Rich Hill took the mound on Sunday. With the team in dire need of Hill to not just pitch effectively, but to cover as many as innings as possible in the process the veteran did just that for his team.

After the Pirate bullpen had to cover 12 innings in the first two games of the series they were a depleted group on Sunday afternoon. Hill stepped up and pitched 6.2 innings, with the only run he allowed being an Andrew Knizner solo home run in the 7th inning. Hill allowed four hits, walked three, and struck out six.

This was one of his best starts since joining the Pirates and, when you cosider the circumstances, one of the best outings of the season from a Pirate starting pitcher. It was the type of start you expect from a veteran like Hill.

Huge series for the bullpen, including some unexpected heroes

For much of the season the Pirate bullpen has been a major strength for the team. This has led to the team having the second lowest bullpen ERA in the National League. So the team getting a huge series from the bullpen against the Cardinals was not a surprise, but some of the unexpected heroes who stepped up in the bullpen was a surprise.

As we covered above, the Pirates only got 6 innings from their starting pitchers in the first two games of the series. Due to this, the bullpen had to cover 12 innings in this game. That will always lead to pitchers at the bottom of the bullpen ladder being used, and to their credit each of these pitchers stepped up.

Firday night the Pirates going 1.2 scoreless innings of relief from Cody Bolton, who was coming off an outing against the Giants in which he was shelled, and lefty Rob Zastryzny pitched a scoreless inning. Friday was also the first of three consecutive games in which Yohan Ramirez pitched a posted a zero.

In what essentially became a bullpen game, Angel Perdomo pitched 2.1 perfect innings of relief in his Pirate debut and Yerry De Los Santos pitched 2/3 of a scoreless inning in his season debut. Jose Hernandez pitched 1/3 of a scoreless inning, and Dauri Moreta fired 1.2 scoreless inning. Moreta also got a huge out in Sunday's victory.

For the first time in his career David Bednar was asked to pitch in three cosnecutvei games. Bednar pitched a scoreless 9th inning in each of these appearances, leading to him picking up 3 saves over the weekend. Bednar appears to be well on his way to his second consecutive All-Star Game appearances.

In total, the Pirate bullpen pitchd 14.1 innings in this series. The lone runs they allowed came when Colin Holderman had a blip on the radar appearance on Saturday afternoon when he allowed a 2-run home run. These were the first runs allowed by Holderman since April.

When team's put together the type of unexpected start to a season that the Pirates are off to you often times have games where unexpected heroes step up. For the Bucco bullpen, that was the story of the entire weekend. Well, that along with the usual cast of character doing their thing.

Ke'Bryan Hayes may be heating up

For much of the season Ke'Bryan Hayes has struggled at the plate. Even though he has continued his defensive wizardry, he just flat out has not been good enough offensively. However, it appears that Hayes may be finding something at the plate.

In the team's series finale in San Francisco last Wednesday, Hayes went 2-for-5 at the plate with a triple and a RBI. During that game you could see some changes in his approach at the plate leading to a better swing and Hayes catching the ball out in front more.

Hayes followed up this strong series finale against the Giants with a big series against the Cardinals.

In Friday night's victory Hayes drove in the first run of the game with a RBI single. Then in the 7th inning, he gave the Pirates their first lead of the night with a 3-run home run during their big comeback. Hayes did it again with the long ball in Saturday's victory bt launching a solo home run in the 5th inning to tie the game.

Sunday afternoon Hayes had three more hits. This included hustling out an infield hit in the 1st inning to help the Pirates grab an early 2-0 lead.

If this is the start of Hayes starting to figure something out at the plate that would be a huge shot in the arm for this Pirate lineup. It's always been said that Hayes just needs to give average offensive output with what he does defensively. If he can take what he's done the last four games and do that over an extended period of time, then you're talking about one of the best two-way players in the National League.