In a season this went wrong for the Pittsburgh Pirates, at least one thing should come true.
Maybe it started to happen this weekend.
The Pirates’ 5-4 win Sunday afternoon at PNC Park completed a sweep of three games for the Milwaukee Brewers. They scored 24 runs in three days. A volcanic eruption by Pirates (7-17) standards.
An ability to retire was one of the few aspects that should be a positive in 2020.
A season that from the beginning seems destined for failure.
However, before we swept the Brewers, we had not seen much of that. The Pirates began Sunday’s action with just 97 runs – 28th in Major League Baseball. The team also started the day last in MLB in team OPS (.639) and on-base percentage (.283).
Kevin Newman is down to .269 from .308 a year ago. Colin Moran’s restless start has disappeared. He hit just .232 in August and has only played one home game in his last 15 games. Gregory Polanco had five hits over the weekend – including a forward run home run Sunday – after STORAGE its average up to .151. Similarly, Adam Frazier also had five hits over the three games to reach .200.
Plus, Newman and Moran both left Sunday’s game with injuries.
Beyond all that, though, the most important corner of this recent wake-up call is to get the fluctuations of Josh Bell and Bryan Reynolds back on course over the last 36 games.
As of Monday morning, Bell hits .205. He has just two homers and 10 RBIs. He has only four extra base hits, while he has a total of 28 strikeouts – and an on-base percentage of .250 (OPS .545).
Reynolds hits .220 with two home games, seven RBIs and 28 strikeouts. He is also looking for a .304 on-base percentage and a sloppy percentage of .394 (.694 OPS).
Keep in mind that these numbers for Reynolds include what has been his toughest stretch of the season (6 for his last 13).
Forget the fight of the other hitters. The team has the largest investment in those two. Bell’s $ 4.8 million deal to start the season was the one to highest contract on the team, and Reynolds would have to make a significant return in the Andrew McCutchen trade for years.
They are the position players of the organization with the most cache. Bell was an All-Star in 2019 and Reynolds finished fourth in the National League Rookie of the Year balloting. If we were to allow people at PNC Park again in 2021, you would imagine that these two would be at the center of the team’s marketing campaign.
Unlike the Pirates, Bell trades. And if they did, they would do so at the bottom of its value after a down 2020 and a slide in the second half of 2019.
Once there is reason to be optimistic for 2021, these two will have to pick it up by the end of 2020 in the battery box.
“I came outside of myself and maybe did too much and made up too much ground,” Reynolds said last week. “I just have to stay within myself and get a good pitch to ride and not hunt.”
Manager Derek Shelton says the biggest problem for the swing of Reynolds’ switch has been clear.
“When we saw him go through combat, he was late,” Shelton said Sunday. ‘Now we see him be closer to time. And the encouraging thing is that it’s on both sides of the plate. ”
Shelton also says timing is the issue with Bell this year, not so much a mechanical issue.
“Timing is not a mechanical thing. Timing is a mental thing, ”says Shelton. ” I’m getting ready to ride. ‘(Timing) is a thought process. It can lead to mechanical problems. Of fixes. But it is a thought process of ready to go. ”
Identifying the problem is one thing. Solving is another. Reynolds may have gotten in that way against Milwaukee. Bell is still figuring things out.
At this point, the figures for 2020 will be irrelevant. The progress for 2021 is all that matters.
It would be nice to see a bit of that in the second half of what this puzzle of a season ends.
Tim Benz is a Staff Writer Tribune Review. You can contact Tim at [email protected] or via Twitter. All tweets could be re-posted. All emails are subject to publication unless otherwise noted.
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