CINCINNATI — The Pirates have six pitchers on the injured list right now. Four of them — JT Brubaker, Steven Brault, Dillon Peters and Bryse Wilson — are starters. Another, Duane Underwood Jr., was an innings eater for the team earlier this season and often served as a long reliever.
As a result, manager Derek Shelton has had to get creative. Left-hander Sam Howard took his first career start in the majors this weekend against the Philadelphia Phillies. More commonly, though, the Pirates have used right-hander Connor Overton in the first inning and gone with him as long as he can go. Then they’ve turned to right-hander Cody Ponce to eat as many innings as he can after that.
So far, in their four games with Overton or Howard starting — which have all come since Sept. 16 — the Pirates are 0-4 and have allowed a combined 34 runs in those games. None were as bad as Monday’s drubbing at the hands of the Cincinnati Reds, a game they lost 13-1.
Overton got blitzed immediately. He allowed a single to right-center, a double to left-center, a sacrifice fly, a homer and another single to the first five batters he faced. For good measure, he gave up one more run on a two-out single to put the Pirates in a four-run hole. That was all he could muster, and Shelton turned to Ponce in the second inning.
Ponce was solid. He pitched two scoreless frames in the second and third, and he should have gotten out of the fourth, too. After a one-out double by Jonathan India, Ponce induced a weak ground ball to first base. Colin Moran, however, botched the grounder and allowed the runner to reach easily. That was especially costly since Ponce forced a flyout to the next batter. With one out instead of two, though, that scored a run.
Then the real pain came. Joey Votto absolutely crushed a two-out, two-run homer to the top row in right field. Eugenio Suarez followed up with a homer of his own to dead center. All of the runs were unearned, but they were all equally effective in putting this game entirely out of reach for the Pirates.
Of course, there were still innings to play. Right-hander Kyle Keller got shelled in the sixth, allowing a three-run shot to Nick Castellanos. Right-hander Shelby Miller gave up a bomb of his own to India in the seventh.
Overton was actually supposed to start last Wednesday against the Reds, but that game was rained out and postponed to Monday. So Overton started Thursday against the Phillies instead, a game the team lost 12-6, then rallied for the start Monday.
But it isn’t Overton’s fault that the Pirates are criminally undermanned right now. It also isn’t his fault that the Pirates squeezed out only one run against Reds starter Reiver Sanmartin, who was making his MLB debut and pitched 5 2/3 one-run frames.
The Pirates just appeared bedraggled. They and their struggling bullpen limped into Cincinnati after losing three of four games to the Phillies this weekend, then limped right back out of it with a 12-run loss to show for it.
