Cold bats spoil more dominant pitching for Pirates in series loss vs. Cubs

CHICAGO -- The Pirates are a team of two extremes.

On the one hand, they have one of the best rotations in baseball. Entering play Sunday, Pirates starters have combined to throw the most innings (230 2/3) while boasting the lowest ERA (2.97) in baseball since the start of May. Their 34 quality starts as a unit this season are tied for the third-most in the game, and among the five pitchers who are tied atop the individual leaderboard with 11, two are Pirates: Paul Skenes and Sunday’s starter, Mitch Keller.

On the other hand, the offense has been one of the worst in baseball. The Pirates' 232 runs scored are the fewest in the game. Their .638 team OPS is tied with the White Sox for the worst in baseball. It’s been a constant thorn in their side.

This weekend at Wrigley Field, the two extremes were very apparent and yielded four one-run, low-scoring games. The Pirates wound up being on the wrong side of three of those contests, including Sunday, where they lost to the Cubs in 10 innings, 3-2.

“It was a well-fought series,” manager Don Kelly said. “It sucks when you go 1-3 in those series because we know we had a chance to win some of those games. There were a lot of good things, some things we need to continue to work on offensively and continue to get better at."

Games like this have become the norm for Keller. He and Cubs starter Colin Rea gave up two quick runs in the first but then locked in to throw five scoreless innings. Keller was on the hook for just three hits and two walks, but with little offensive support, he got a no-decision.

In Keller’s 11 quality starts, the Pirates have gone just 3-8. His individual record is 1-9.

Locked into another pitchers' duel, the Cubs finally created their opportunity in the 10th, pulling off a double steal to put the winning run 90 feet away with nobody out. David Bednar struck out Jon Berti and got ahead of Ian Happ with two splitters, but the third splitter was lined to right for a walk-off single.

"I think going in, we kind of expected a series like this,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “We expected low-scoring, and that means you have to make plays, whether it be on defense. You have to make pitches. You have to throw strikes. You have to run the bases well. Those things get highlighted and emphasized in series like this, conditions like this.”

The Pirates came up just short several times Sunday. Brett Sullivan and Oneil Cruz both tagged long fly balls in the fifth inning that died on the warning track. Isiah Kiner-Falefa lined a potential base hit in the 10th that likely would have brought home the automatic runner, but Nico Hoerner made a diving catch up the middle to take away the potential go-ahead RBI.

Catching a break probably feels long overdue and could have made this a series split. A couple of 50/50 balls going their way could have even made this a potential series win. But there’s something to be said about being able to create your own luck.

“You see it every day, the guys are putting in the work and it’s only going to get better,” said Spencer Horwitz, who had two hits and an RBI. “That’s what I’ve learned throughout my career, is that if you put in the work, you’re going to get rewarded for it.”

If there’s any solace, when asked what he attributes the rotation’s heater on, Keller also talked about the behind-the-scenes work.

“We're all there supporting each other,” Keller said. “We all kind of know what each other is working on and what we need to do to get better. And we're all pressing each other and staying on one another. I think you can just see that with our midweek work and then we go out there, it kind of just takes care of itself. Nobody sees the stuff you do behind the scenes. They just see us when we go out there.”

Perhaps something similar will happen on offense, too. Until then, the Pirates are probably signing themselves up for more low-scoring series.