The last time the Pirates were playing baseball as a team, Joe Musgrove was pitching in Bradenton, Fla.. He pitched into the fifth inning on that Mar. 12 afternoon, and shortly after exiting the game, he learned spring training was being suspended.
On Friday, the Pirates were back together, albeit in limited groups. Once again, Musgrove was pitching, this time in a simulated game at PNC Park as part of the first workouts of the team's summer camp.
Those two outings were not the same, though. He would say the difference between the two outings was "night and day," favoring the one that happened Friday.
"[It gave] a lot of confidence for me today just to get through those five innings and stay efficient and to see the ball spinning how it was in the fourth and fifth innings the way it was in the first inning," Musgrove said during a Zoom call after his workout Friday. "I didn’t feel like I was tiring or wearing out. Fatigue is setting in a little bit from the ups and downs, but I feel like I was still able to lock in and get the life that i needed in the late innings."
In the sim, Musgrove faced Gregory Polanco, Josh Bell, Colin Moran, Phillip Evans and Luke Maile and threw to Jacob Stallings. Five sim innings comes out to a 75-pitch outing.
"He looked really good," Derek Shelton said in a Zoom call once workouts were over. "Five innings, stuff looked good, walked off the mound healthy. The stuff looked sharp. It’s really not the first time because he’s been building up to pitch five innings. It’s not like he went zero to 100 on it. Very happy with how it went. [Pitching coach] Oscar Marin was very happy with the pitch execution and how the stuff looked."
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