CHICAGO — It has been said before and will be said again about this Pirates team.
Much of the focus from here on out is figuring out what exactly they have on their roster.
Not the roster as a whole — they are now 48-84 after a 4-2 loss to the White Sox on Tuesday. Anyone who has paid attention to this team all season has a pretty good idea of what it is from a wins and losses standpoint.
More importantly to the future, the goal right now is to see who can produce over this last month and be a part of next season’s roster.
One player who seems to be seizing his opportunity is right-hander Bryse Wilson. Entering Tuesday night, he had a 3.60 ERA with 15 strikeouts and five walks in 20 innings covering four starts since joining the Pirates at the trade deadline.
Truthfully, that ERA was hurt Tuesday. He gave up four earned runs in 5+ innings. It didn’t tell the whole story, though. The first run Wilson allowed was on a homer to White Sox catcher Yasmani Grandal. It was smoked, but Grandal is a man possessed right now and one of the best sluggers in baseball. That was in the second inning.
In the third, Wilson got tagged again, this time by Jose Abreu, who stuck his bat head out and caught an outside fastball, giving it a ride just over the fence in right field. Well, Abreu leads all of baseball in RBIs, and it wasn’t exactly a meatball, so that’s understandable too.
The real damage came in the sixth inning. Wilson had already completed five on just 64 pitches and was in decent shape to get deep into the game. But Abreu led off the sixth with a hard ground ball just wide of third base. Maybe if regular third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes were healthy, it would have been an out, but Wilmer Difo couldn’t get all the way behind the ball, his throw was late and high and Abreu took first.
The next batter, Eloy Jimenez, floated a fastball in on his hands into right, and that was all the leash Wilson was given. Left-hander Chasen Shreve entered afterward, gave up the two inherited runners, thus saddling Wilson with two more earned runs.
The larger point, though, is that this was one of Wilson’s most efficient outings of the season. Even after Abreu and Jimenez knocked him out of the game, he had thrown just 69 pitches and had not been in much danger the whole night until then. That’s against the White Sox, who have the sixth-highest team OPS in baseball this season and have scored the fifth-most runs in MLB. That is at least noteworthy as the 23-year-old continues to acclimate on his new team.
Of course, far too often, those bright spots are present in a darker picture. The Pirates’ offense was near silent all night. They accumulated five hits all night, and all of them were singled. And that’s in a lineup with players trying to prove their role for next season. Players like Yoshi Tsutsugo, Kevin Newman, Hoy Park and Cole Tucker could all be lumped into that category like Wilson. The four of them combined to go 1-for-14 with two walks. Obviously one game doesn’t define their season or their future on the team, but this was an ugly one for them and the rest of the offense.
Park at least scored a run in the fifth, as part of the only substantive Pirates rally. He led off with a walk, advanced to second on a wild pitch, moved over to third on a Ben Gamel infield single, then scored on another wild pitch. Eventually, Gamel scored too on an RBI single for first baseman Colin Moran.
That was essentially it.
So even if Wilson was good again, and that is encouraging, the Pirates still need much, much more. If that isn’t obvious at this point in the season, then it never will be.
It doesn’t mean Wilson can’t be a bright spot, though. Even if his line looks unremarkable in the end, he was better than that overall. The Pirates will take that on an overall lackluster night.
