PITTSBURGH — It’s an outcome many considered inevitable from the moment players began arriving at Pirate City back in February. One-hundred losses. A rare feat. An embarrassing, inglorious number. Something that has happened here just seven times since Woodrow Wilson was president.
Depending on your point of view, No. 8 either took a really long time or about a minute to become final.
The Pirates officially became a 100-loss team Thursday and did so in appropriate fashion, suffering a 9-0 loss to the Cubs at PNC Park that wasn’t nearly as close as the final score might indicate.
Shortstop Rafael Ortega opened the game by clobbering a first-pitch homer off Miguel Yajure, the Cubs found the end zone (but missed the extra point) with a six-run second and kept the Pirates offense from doing much of anything, the club totaling six hits, none for extra bases, advancing a runner to second base twice and hitting into three double plays.
Considering the Pirates (59-100) have neither won four consecutive games nor swept a series this season, the prospect of them avoiding 100 losses in 2021 was, well, not good. But there was a very thin thread of hope given some of the promise Yajure has shown.
A 23-year-old right-hander making his third start and fourth appearance with the big club this season, Yajure has at various times displayed an advanced feel for pitching, a fastball that’s good enough and sharp-breaking curveball, ingredients that should have the Pirates excited for next season.
They, however, might want to shred this tape.
The homered Yajure allowed to Ortega came on a fastball middle-middle, and Ortega did exactly what he should have done: cranking it into the right-field stands. The second-inning, two-blast from shortstop Sergio Alcantara was not much different — sinker, middle-middle, boom.
A steady drip sunk the Pirates from there. First baseman Frank Schwindel’s groundout made it 4-0. The Pirates later butchered a double steal, with Jacob Stallings’ throw down to second a hair off the mark, and Cole Tucker firing back wide of home plate, pulling Stallings too far away from the runner, Ortega.
Catcher Willson Contreras went inside-out on a Yajure curve, sending it down the right-field line for a double and a 6-0 advantage before third baseman Matt Duffy drove an outside fastball to left to score a seventh run.
At that point — and probably long before it — the damage had been done. Yajure lasted just two innings and coughed up seven earned runs on seven hits. It was the exact opposite of what Roansy Contreras experienced Wednesday, which was something positive to take into the offseason.
Tanner Anderson followed and allowed two more runs in the fifth thanks to singles from second baseman David Bote and Alcantara, but it’s not like that mattered much. Not with the Pirates offense accumulating just four hits against Cubs starter Justin Steele, who sailed through seven scoreless on just 76 pitches.
One of the few bright spots for the Pirates included Michael Chavis, who led off with a hustle single and made a couple of stellar plays at third base. Anderson also gave the Pirates five innings of two-run ball.
But reaching the 100-loss mark as the Pirates did Thursday was less about what happened in an individual game and more about what it says about where they are as a franchise.
Clearly not good enough at the major league level, which isn’t breaking news, and the focal point has been, and will continue to be, pitching. They simply don’t have enough of it at the major league level, hence why they felt compelled to start Contreras on Wednesday.
That worked out. This did not. And the Pirates will need much, much more from Yajure if he has plans on becoming a rotation mainstay in 2022. They also need to figure out a way to give whomever takes the ball some consistent run support.
Steele began Thursday’s gave having allowed six home runs over his past three starts (7.71 ERA), yet the Pirates struggled to make any loud contact whatsoever. They had just six batted balls that would qualify as hard-hit (95-plus mph exit velocity).
But give the Pirates this: If there was a way to get to 100 that says something about how this season has gone, they accomplished that on Thursday. The only thing missing was some sort of egregious, Will Craig-style goof to top it all off.
