ST. LOUIS -- "It was so wet out," Jacob Stallings was observing late Thursday afternoon here at Busch Stadium, and he wasn't talking about a storm of any sort. Rather, it was the sweaty, sticky Missouri humidity that only a mosquito could love. As in 88 degrees with, like, an 800 degree heat index.
"Seriously," Stallings would add, "you couldn't even grip the ball."
Still, these Pirates stuck it out, persevering through the temps as well as the two-game beatdown they'd just absorbed in Chicago, to sweep this makeup doubleheader with the Cardinals at Busch Stadium, taking the opener, 4-3, on Chad Kuhl's sharp start, then the nightcap, 2-0, on a career-first win for Cody Ponce and a career-first save for Nik Turley.
Oh, and a clubhouse beer shower afterward for both.
Sticky right to the end.
“It’s honestly awesome. It’s a great time," Ponce gushed through a grin, his hair still soaked as he got to the Zoom chair for interviews. "Very light, fun atmosphere going on right now."
"It’s just exciting," Turley would echo. "It felt really good."
It showed. With the 27th out of Game 2 -- wait, no, the 21st out since doubleheaders are now two seven-inning games in coronavirus times -- the visitors' dugout collectively let out a roar that sounded, maybe fittingly given the format, like an American Legion team about to head out for ice cream and sundaes.
Good for them. I mean it. Huzzah 'n' at to all of them.
OK, now, you want to know what the wettest thing was in the whole place?
Yeah, it's the wet blanket I'm about to bring to these proceedings.
Apologies in advance, but I can't get past one thing about these 2020 Pirates, and I'm pretty sure that won't change until the circumstance itself does: They don't hit. Like, hardly ever.
Pull up a chair:
• Their .219 batting average, should it persist, would be the lowest in the franchise's 134-year history. Though if one really wants to hunt asterisks, one can scavenge back to 1884, three years before Pittsburgh was formally born in joining the National League, when that part-time cadre of coal-miners batted .211.
• Their .623 OPS, or on-base plus slugging percentage -- my favorite catch-all hitting stat -- is the Pirates' lowest since 1917.
• Their 70 OPS+, which weighs the rest of the league's output and is thus the best way to even out spikes between dead-ball and juiced-ball eras, is the worst in the majors since the 1920 Philadelphia Athletics.
You read that right: It's the worst offense anyone's witnessed in exactly a century.
And even on this day, undoubtedly the brightest amid a 9-19 season, the offensive ignominy followed: The Pirates totaled six runs between the two games, half of them unearned, and their dozen hits were all singles, marking the first time they'd gone through a doubleheader without an extra-base hit since Sept. 29, 1989, against the Mets.
More amusing, this also marked the first time the Pirates swept a doubleheader without an extra-base hit since July 4, 1918, against the Reds.
This was Cole Tucker's winning RBI in Game 1:
And Erik Gonzalez's winning RBI in Game 2:
Sure, there were also some honest-to-Honus hits, as well as other hard contact on outs, but hey, we're going back a long, long way for a lot of these most recent precedents for hitting futility, and there's a reason for it: The hitters who were supposed to hit this season still haven’t.
Look, I've been the first to cite the colossal impact of 13 players lost to injury this summer. But most of the injuries have been to pitchers, chiefly three starters and the top three relievers. No significant hitter had gone down until Colin Moran on this very day to a stint on the seven-day concussion injury list, unless one counts Gregory Polanco starting out late because of a positive coronavirus test. Everyone else has been here all along.
And remarkably, nearly halfway through this 60-game schedule, we're still waiting on nearly all of them.
Pull up another chair:
Bell, Reynolds and Newman, in particular, were expected to be foundational pieces for the future. That's why I'm worried, way more than the team's overall performance to date. Because without those guys regaining form, if you think about it, Ben Cherington's facing two or three times his initial challenge in overcoming a Neal Huntington/Kyle Stark farm system, regardless of whether he intends to keep or trade them.
Remember how Huntington traded Xavier Nady and Jason Bay early in his tenure in hopes of building up the system?
Remember how Nady and Bay were both moved at peak value?
OK, where's that scenario now if this group flames out?
I don't have answers here. But finding them is the No. 1 priority for the remainder of 2020, more than wins, more than the trade deadline.
That responsibility falls most directly to Rick Eckstein, the hitting coach the players were practically begging upper management to keep over the winter, but he's hardly alone. Derek Shelton's an old hitting coach himself, and he's told me he's involved in the instruction, as well.
I asked Shelton here what he's seeing with these players, if there's any common thread.
"Well, I think the one common thread is the aggressiveness, or being ready to hit the fastball," he replied, meaning a lack of that trait. "I think we saw that during the Milwaukee series. We did a good job of it. It's something we have to stay consistent with. Our timing has to be consistent. We have to work off the fastball and, if you don't do that, you're going to see inconsistencies."
He downplayed the two games in Chicago, the embarrassing no-hitter against Lucas Giolito and a nearly-as-complete stifling the next day by Dallas Keuchel, as "teaching moments," preferring instead to focus on the sweep of the Brewers and this sweep here.
"We're looking to be more aggressive, more ready."
We'll see. Ideally, the script simply flips. Meaning they all start hitting, they all start practicing what Eckstein preached all through 2019 about shrinking their strike zones and swinging like they hate the ball when it's there, they all start ... doing a lot more of what was seen at least a little on this day: Bell was 1 for 5 with two walks, Reynolds 1 for 7 with an RBI, Newman 1 for 4 in his first game back after a strained side.
I asked Reynolds, and he came back in that deep Johnny Cash intonation, "We're making strides. We're getting there. We feel like it'll turn soon."
Awesome. It'll make this column all wet.
[caption id="attachment_1018618" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
Chad Kuhl pitches Thursday afternoon in St. Louis. - GETTY[/caption]
• No one on either side outshone Kuhl in Game 1, with his six strong innings -- one run, four hits, K, four walks, 81 pitches -- that lowered his ERA to a team-best 2.52.
He walked two batters after two outs in the sixth, only to find a little extra in striking out Tyler O'Neill through a nose-diving slider, followed by an exclamation I could hear all the way up in the press box and ... couldn't possibly print in this column.
"Yeah, heard that, huh?" Kuhl replied with a little laugh when I brought that up.
He's due the happiness after a two-year recovery from Tommy John surgery, although he doesn't sound like he's taking it too far.
"I think I've done some really good things," Kuhl said. "Mechanically, I’ve made some really good changes to help me be around the zone a little bit more. ... I feel really good. I don't really know if there's a certain way I'm supposed to be feeling, but I feel really good every time I'm out there. It’s just getting into that baseball shape, where every five days you're out there for as long as you can go. I'm really happy with where I'm at right now and I'm excited to see where we go from here."
As for what he might've meant by "baseball shape," his catcher and good bud shed some light.
“I think people forget, when Chad got hurt, he was throwing the best out of anyone on our staff probably," Stallings said. "He has good stuff. He can just get you out so many different ways. To your point, he’s kind of still working his way back from some of that post-surgery soreness that those guys really have to deal with that probably two years out of surgery. He’s been throwing the ball great. Couldn’t be happier for him, because he’s one of my best friends. He’s really worked his way back, worked hard.”
• The score was 1-1 in the extra-inning eighth in Game 1 when the Pirates pieced together a rare three-run rally: Jarrod Dyson opened at second as a pinch-runner and scored easily when Tucker one-handed a one-out single into center. Reynolds' two-out single into center brought another, and Stallings' bouncer to third mishandled by Brad Miller added yet another.
Not a hard-hit ball in the bunch. And not an apology to be found for that.
"We haven't gotten many breaks," Stallings reacted to that topic.
• Gonzalez is so much better defensively than I'm guessing most casual observers will realize. His reflexes and soft hands allow him to get to balls and secure them so quickly, so smoothly, that he makes plays look routine.
"He did some great things out there today," Shelton brought up on his own.
[caption id="attachment_1018735" align="aligncenter" width="640"]
Cody Ponce pitches Thursday night in St. Louis. - GETTY[/caption]
• Ponce, a big-bodied, big-smiling, 26-year-old, 6-foot-5 right-hander who's bounced around the minors for five years, made the most of his first big-league start with 5 2/3 scoreless innings, five hits and two strikeouts and walks each.
When he's gotten into messes in the minors, he responded afterward to one of my questions, it's because he'd overthink things rather than "just throwing the ball." So he seemed to appreciate here that batterymate John Ryan Murphy encouraged him in an early mound visit to disregard the names of the St. Louis batters and fire away.
"That relaxed me," Ponce said. "Now, it was just pitching the way I've pitched my whole life."
He was a second-round draft pick of the Brewers in 2015, by the way, so there's pedigree.
• The Cardinals were bad. It's only fair to point that out. Three official errors on the day but two other clear misplays. Uninspired approaches at the plate. And coincidence or not, but the coronavirus shutdown that cost them 17 days now has them logging 53 games over the season's final 44 days, including 11 doubleheaders. That's insanity.
"I'm confident we have the depth to handle this," St. Louis manager Mike Shildt said afterward. "But as you could see today, we've got to find a way to play as clean as possible, and not give them extra outs."
The Cardinals had won 9 of 15 before this.
• On the subject of hitting enigmas, Polanco's monster weekend against the Brewers has been followed by an 0-for-13 on this trip with six Ks. I give up.
• There's something up with the Pirates and Ke'Bryan Hayes, now that he's been bypassed in favor of Will Craig. Hayes has long since cleared any Super-2 concerns for 2020, he's more capable of helping this team right now than half of everyone here, and yet, he's still stuck in Altoona.
If this were Huntington/Stark, I'd cite their old regular ploy of keeping a player down an extra week or two beyond what the player expected just to see how the player reacted, but these guys aren't those guys, and there've been few clues to explain this one.
When Shelton was asked Thursday, seemingly for the millionth time, why someone else leapfrogged Hayes in getting promoted -- Craig in this case -- he responded somewhat blithely, "I think it was a situation where we wanted to get a look at Will and see how it was going to go. Obviously, at some point, Ke'Bryan is going to be here. I understand that people are excited about him. I think that's real. But we're going to get a chance to see what Will Craig has."
Yeah, something's up.
• I was no less disappointed to not see Blake Cederlind, the only player of the three-man taxi squad on this trip who didn't get activated, but that at least made sense: Nick Mears, the choice over Cederlind, has been stretched out, and as Shelton explained, "We need innings."
Mears wasn't needed in this doubleheader.
• Nutty number for the day: The Pirates are 8-8 against the National League, 1-11 against the American League.
• Another minor move on the day: Cherington claimed outfielder Anthony Alford off waivers from his former employer, the Blue Jays. Alford's 26 and has only 75 big-league plate appearances on his resume -- .155/.200/.254 -- but he was rated Toronto's No. 3 prospect in 2018, No. 47 in all of baseball.
Weird, but obviously worth a shot. Especially since Cherington would know him better than most, and Shelton knew him, too, from shared time in the lower minors.
"Great, great kid, one of my favorites," Shelton said after Game 2. "We're looking forward to having him."
• It's clear the Pirates were never close on this day to joining in the racial injustice protests that have hit professional sports.
"There was no discussion of us not playing," was how Shelton described it. "I mean, I did have discussions with individual players about their thoughts and continuing to be mindful of what's going on, but there was no discussion of us not playing."
MORE PIRATES COVERAGE
• Moran, Kela placed on IL
• Finding ways through gauntlet
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