PITTSBURGH — Prior to Wednesday’s season finale, which turned out to be a 5-3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals, Pirates manager Derek Shelton admitted that he gets frustrated too, sometimes.
Much of that pregame discussion surrounded the season at large, because that was most appropriate. Sure, this win on the final day of the season at least sends the Pirates out on a high note, but it doesn’t really change anything. They didn’t set out this season on a quest to win 62 games on the dot, and the bumps along the way have been ugly and plentiful.
But Shelton joined the Pirates as part of a new brain trust prior to the 2020 season. When he was hired, general manager Ben Cherington laid out the plan, and the two have worked closely to try to see it out. That plan is clear by now. Any veterans from that 2020 are mostly gone. The young players have been given the playing time. After a round of substitutions in Wednesday’s win, the Pirates had five rookie position players on the field, with Rodolfo Castro, Kevin Newman and Miguel Andujar the only exceptions.
The Pirates point to that group, among others, and see hope for the future, believing that development of those young pieces can turn into a winner at some point down the road. Skepticism is warranted from the outside, but that’s the Pirates’ line and they’re sticking to it.
To that end, at least Wednesday was a positive sign. Castro, not necessarily a rookie but certainly a young player whose shown promise, drove in the Pirates’ first run on a third-inning RBI single.
In the fourth, Andujar tripled and scored on a wild pitch. Rookie Oneil Cruz reached on a walk then scored on an RBI double from rookie Diego Castillo. Rookie outfielder Jack Suwinski walked behind him, and both scored on an RBI groundout from rookie Ji Hwan Bae and an RBI single from Newman, respectively.
In the grand scheme of the season, those contributions are too little, too late. In the scope of the rebuild itself, those are the glimmers of hope from which the Pirates are looking to build.
In this specific game, the young position players got their young starting pitcher out of hot water. Johan Oviedo, the 24-year-old acquired from the Cardinals at the trade deadline, lasted just four innings and gave up two runs in the first and another in the third, allowing five hits along the way. A pair of errors didn’t help his cause, either, to be fair.
It was clear that Oviedo was on a slight pitch count, though, considering that he had tossed 13 combined innings in his two most recent outings. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a perfect outing, but Oviedo still has shown enough promise in his short time with the Pirates that he will certainly play some sort of role for the team moving forward.
After he left the game, the Pirates’ bullpen locked it down, with Junior Fernandez, Manny Banuelos, Nick Mears and Yohan Ramirez combining to toss five scoreless innings to wrap up the victory. That hasn’t always been the norm, as Shelton himself has said there is work needed to improve this bullpen in the future.
Of course, that improvement couldn’t have been accomplished in one game to finish the season, either. None of it could. The Pirates will have to prove much more in the years to come for anyone outside the organization to sign on to this rebuild whole-heartedly.
But the Pirates at least believe in their own plan, and if there was ever a time for the young players to put that plan on display, it would be in the final game of the season. At least they accomplished that.
