The Pirates' injury-depleted bullpen was exposed by the Tigers Friday at PNC Park, losing despite the offense's best showing of the year, 17-13, in 11 innings.
Sixteen of those runs came from the bullpen over seven innings pitched.
The Pirates had the lead for most of the night early, but allowed six runs in the seventh inning. While he was only charged with three of those runs, Miguel Del Pozo was on the rubber for all six.
That swung a 7-6 advantage to being down five runs, and while the Pirates would go on to tie it twice in the ninth and 10th, they could not take the lead back.
When asked why the Pirates turned to Del Pozo in that situation, Derek Shelton responded, "you saw the pitching we had available tonight."
"With the pitching we had after we lost [Steven] Brault with the piggyback, we didn’t have anything available," Shelton said.
The Pirates currently have five relievers on the injured list. Two will not come back this season: Nick Burdi and Michael Feliz. The other three -- Keone Kela, Kyle Crick and Clay Holmes -- do not have timetables for a return, though Kela at least appears to be close, being scheduled to throw a live bullpen session Saturday.
On top of that, the relievers have been taxed early, with the Pirates only getting a full six innings once from a starting pitcher.
Chad Kuhl did not break that trend Friday, though he was able to go the four innings he was stretched out for. He struck out seven and only allowed one-hit: A second-inning solo shot to CJ Cron.
It was Kuhl's first start since June 26, 2018.
"It always feels good to go back and go through your normal routine and know exactly when you're going to pitch and everything like that," Kuhl said. "So it just felt good to be out there and playing ball."
The Pirates' problems began in the fifth inning when they went to the second half of their piggyback, Brault, who walked three and allowed three hits without recording an out. As a result, Shelton had to go to his bullpen sooner than expected.
"I think he was just rushing a little bit," Shelton said about Brault's night. "I think he was rushing forward coming off his back side, and because of it, he was losing his arm angle, and the fastball command that we’ve seen that has been, I would say, really good or elite just wasn’t there tonight,"
Brault and reliever Geoff Hartlieb would end up walking three of the four runs scored that inning. Yacksel Rios would be charged with four runs over his inning-plus of work as well.
The Pirates did rally back from being down to their last strike three separate times in the ninth inning, with Adam Frazier driving a game-tying home run.
In the 10th, Nik Turley was charged with an unearned run when catcher JR Murphy could not corral Cole Tucker's throw from right field. Tucker would tie the game on a sac fly in the home half of the inning.
"The fact that they continue to fight, if they don’t fight, then I think we’ll have an issue, but to continue to come back, to be right on the cusp of winning the game, and then we get into extra innings, and then the game kind of got away from us," Shelton said. "But they continue to battle. We had bounce back innings when we gave up the lead. To come back and do what we did in the ninth and have a chance to win the game, I thought it was outstanding."
There wasn't much fight left for the 11th, though, as Dovydas Neverauskas, who Shelton said had an "emergency only" availability because of his early season workload, was charged with four runs and took the loss.
Normally, the Pirates would be looking to bring fresh arms from the minors to help share the workload after a game like Friday, but they have already raided their available stash of pitchers from their alternate training camp in Altoona, Pa. multiple times over the first two weeks of the regular season.
"We only have so many guys in Altoona to be able," Shelton said. "Because of the amount of guys we have on the IL, I mean, people that we thought were going to provide us with depth are now here, just because of the fact of people not being available. So we’ll have to continue to work through that."
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