ST. LOUIS – Ke'Bryan Hayes almost had the knock of the night. Caught in a pitchers' duel between the Cardinals’ Matthew Liberatore and the Pirates’ Paul Skenes, Hayes finally broke a scoreless contest with a sixth-inning double into the gap to plate Oneil Cruz. Not only was it a go-ahead RBI, it was the 500th hit of Hayes’ career, and a potential game-winner to boot.
That didn’t come to fruition. Skenes fell into trouble in the home half of the inning and surrendered a two-out, two-run double to Alec Burleson. That was all the scoring Tuesday night at Busch Stadium, and the Pirates ended up losing, 2-1.
Postgame, Hayes was asked about the achievement, but his focus was elsewhere.
“It’s pretty cool, but individual stats, I don’t really look at them. I just wanna win,” Hayes said. “We’ve been in a little bit of a rough patch, but I think we just gotta figure out, first individually, what we’ve gotta do and then collectively as a team, gotta figure out how to do it. We were right there most of the game. I don’t know if it’s slowing the game down. I don’t know exactly what it is. We just gotta figure out what we need to do to get on a hot streak.”
The Pirates are still searching for that hot streak to try to right the ship. They’ll settle for a win to snap this six-game skid they’re on now, dropping their record to 12-25.
Expectations were higher coming into this season after finishing with 76-86 records the past two seasons, partially anchored by having a Cy Young favorite at the front of the rotation.
It hasn’t come to fruition. The Pirates are now 3-5 in Skenes’ eight starts – despite his 2.77 ERA – and they currently have the third-worst record in baseball, ahead of only the Rockies and White Sox.
When asked postgame if he felt the season might be slipping away from them, manager Derek Shelton answered, "I don't think we can think about that. I think we have to think about consistency. We gotta get going."
The woes start offensively. The Pirates were limited to four hits Tuesday. Liberatore racked up 17 whiffs, including 11 in total with his four-seam fastball and cutter. Shelton opted to lean into the right-handed hitters in his lineup, even playing young players Matt Gorski and Liover Peguero, who were both recently promoted from Triple-A Indianapolis, to try to provide a spark. Peguero lined a single Tuesday, while Gorski went hitless in his three at-bats.
Injuries have made creating a lineup card that can produce a challenge for Shelton, and the team now ranks 29th in runs scored (118) and 28th in OPS (.634).
“We've tried some different lineups,” Shelton said. “We've tried lineup changes. We've tried consistency in lineups. We've just gotta keep exploring."
While it’s hard to find too much fault with Skenes’ performance – six innings, two runs, three hits and six strikeouts – he did walk four batters for the second straight start. The one to Willson Contreras before Burleson’s game-winning hit was the most costly.
"Yeah, just not executing," Skenes said on what he attributes his spike in walks.
Burleson may be the hitter who has had the most success against Skenes, being the first to record six hits at his expense. The Cardinals can be a pesky outing for Skenes in general, but Burleson doesn’t think there is a secret to the success.
“It takes a little luck, I feel like,” Burleson said. “With a guy like him, you have to have a plan and stick to it for three or four at-bats. That [plan] may not necessarily give you success that night, but it gives you the best for success. That’s what I did and it worked out at a good time.”
Needing some luck and some consistency? That sounds like the two things the Pirates need most right now.
“This is what we do for a living, so there’s no excuses,” Hayes said. “Gotta figure it out, otherwise you lose. Hopefully people aren’t trying to put too much pressure on themselves. The game is hard enough as it is, so we just gotta get back to having fun, creating energy and getting things going.”