MILWAUKEE -- The Pirates were picked up Sunday afternoon by six shutout innings from their bullpen and home runs by Josh Bell and Gregory Polanco to beat the Brewers, 5-1, at Miller Park.
Bell provided the big blow of the afternoon in the fourth, demolishing a 96 mph fastball from Brandon Woodruff:
In case you couldn't see it, that 428-foot home run landed on a previously-mint condition Toyota stationed in right-center field.
Bell had been aiming at that car during batting practice for three years, but that was the first time he actually hit it.
"You’ve got to get it really high," Bell said. "Tough to do in batting practice.”
So if you are on the market for a new Highlander...
"You don’t want that one because it probably has a huge dent in it," Steven Brault joked.
Unless, of course, someone wins the car by hitting it.
"I’m still waiting on the pink slips," Bell said, keeping his fingers crossed.
"[Major-League coach] Glenn Sherlock thinks that car should go to the oldest coach," Derek Shelton said after.
That would mean, by sheer coincidence, that Sherlock, 59, would get it.
"If it went to the oldest looking coach, I would probably win it," Shelton added, pitching his case.
With the way Bell's season had started, he might have been willing to pay to at least pop the dent out for a blast like that. His season has, for the most part, been plagued with strikeouts, chases out of the zone and weak contact.
The heart of the problem seemed to be an inability to time up the fastball, leading to the high volume of whiffs.
Bell is a pretty grounded player, whether he is having a record setting month or the worst one of his career, so he has tried to not stay too far down in the dumps, even amid the strikeouts. Especially since there has been a glimmer of hope lately.
"The last few days, I feel like I’ve been hitting the ball really hard, starting to come out of the slump a little bit," Bell said. "Don’t have exactly everything I want to show for it, but as long as I can stay on the same brain-wavelength of starting on time, being on time for the fastball, I know that’s when the game comes slowly for me."
His home run would be his only hit his four at-bats Sunday, but he also hit two line drives right at Brewers, with all three swings coming against fastballs. He had multi-hit efforts each of the two nights before, including a home run batting right-handed Saturday.
There have been indicators that he has turned a corner started to pop up before this series, too, including chasing out of the zone less and making more consistent contact.
"The timing's better," Shelton explained.
"He’s taking some really good swings," Brault said..
"Everything looks like it’s going a little bit slower for him," Adam Frazier opined.
Making the game feel slower is key to Bell, which is almost impossible to do when you're behind on the fastball.
He has been taking extra reps with the high velocity machine for weeks to try to get his timing back. For the first time, it appears it has.
"It feels like there’s not a redirect to get to fastballs in the zone," Bell said. "It’s just throw the hands at the ball then go from there. It seemed like, at times, you could throw me a ball right down the middle and I was mis-hitting it into the ground. It doesn’t seem like that’s the case right now, so I’m just going to try to stay with where I’m at.”
Bell's importance to the lineup cannot be overstated. For the most part, when he's hot, the whole team's hot. When he's cold, so is the rest of the club. It's probably not fair to put that much pressure on just one hitter, but with the Pirates doing particularly poorly in close games this season, a couple extra hits were sorely needed.
So even if any playoff hopes this year appear to be a lost cause, getting his bat going would be a huge boost.
"It seems like things are turning for me, so I’m definitely excited about it.”
To continue reading, log into your account:
