PITTSBURGH — For as strange as it may seem, the Pirates’ experiment using right-hander Tyler Beede in the starting rotation hasn’t been all bad.
Sure, he allowed five earned runs in his first start this season against the Milwaukee Brewers back on Aug. 3, but he pitched fairly well against the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Francisco Giants his next two times toeing the slab.
On Saturday, in a brutal 10-1 loss to the Cincinnati Reds, he pitched deeper into the game than he has before, but it certainly didn’t go very well.
It wasn’t entirely his fault. Beede worked out of a first-inning jam, then twirled a 1-2-3 second. He was on his way to a scoreless third, but a grounder to deep short turned into a run when shortstop Oneil Cruz one-hopped a throw to first that Bligh Madris couldn’t scoop.
But that play, ultimately ruled an error on Cruz, only accounted for one run’s worth of trouble. In the fourth, Beede can only point the finger at himself. He gave up a pair of singles and was one strike away from getting out of the frame. Reds catcher Austin Romine kept the line going, though, roping a two-run double off the Clemente Wall in right.
Next came outfielder Jake Fraley, who put a rude exclamation point on the end of the inning. Beede gave him a 1-1 slider over the heart of the plate, and Fraley crushed it over the right-field stands, the ball landing in the Allegheny River on one bounce. Fraley became the 44th player in PNC Park history to hit a ball into the river, and it’s the 65th time a ball has ended up wet in the stadium’s history.
Beede didn’t get much support from his offense, though, either. The Pirates could have jumped on the board early, but they didn’t.
Tucupita Marcano smacked a double into right to lead off the first inning but was eventually caught trying to steal third on a pick-off move. In the second, the Pirates loaded the bases with a one-out single and a pair of two-out walks, but catcher Tyler Heineman grounded into a shift to end the inning. The Pirates stranded another in the fourth and fifth, two more in the sixth and another in the eighth.
The only offense they did get came from third baseman Rodolfo Castro. In the fifth, he took a 1-0 fastball to the opposite field, barely clearing the notch in left-center for a solo 412-foot solo blast.
That continued a noticeable hot streak for Castro since being recalled on Aug. 9. In the 11 games he’s played after that, he’s gone 12 for 39 (.308) with a .947 OPS. This was his second homer in that span, too. That’s production the Pirates can certainly use in their order.
But the homer didn’t do much to erase the outcome in this one. The Reds added most of their runs in the ninth. They actually singled in seven consecutive plate appearances, with the first six coming against Pirates left-hander Eric Stout. He was replaced by right-hander Duane Underwood Jr., after facing seven batters, but a broken bat single off Underwood plated another run charged to Stout.
In total, the lopsided inning raised Stout’s season ERA by nearly five runs, from 1.86 to 6.59. It also sent the Pirates on their way to a lopsided loss, marking the 10th time this season they’ve lost by nine or more runs.
