PITTSBURGH — Facing a terrific young pitcher with the last name of Buehler, the Pirates on Tuesday took the day off from basic, fundamental play, the type of stuff they can’t afford to screw up against anyone, let alone the defending World Series champions.
Ke’Bryan Hayes missed first base and then slid past second. Gregory Polanco misplayed a ball in right field. The miscues cost the Pirates a couple of key runs, as they suffered a 5-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers to open a three-game series at PNC Park.
It also didn’t help that Walker Buehler, the Dodgers’ starting pitcher, was once again terrific, delivering seven scoreless innings to improve to 5-0 and lower his ERA to 2.56. Buehler retired the final 13 Pirates he faced. It was the 12th start of six or more innings for Buehler this season. The Pirates as a team have had just 10 such starts.
The defeat drops the Pirates this season to 23-36, as they lost for the 11th consecutive time against the Dodgers. Pittsburgh had won three of four and five of nine coming out of a six-game losing streak.
Making his first start since May 29, JT Brubaker was actually solid for the Pirates, at least through four innings, allowing no runs and harmless singles to center fielder Cody Bellinger and Buehler.
Brubaker also piled up six strikeouts, five of them looking. Three came on sinkers. Two came on sliders. The only other ball to leave the infield through four was a fly out from Dodgers right fielder Mookie Betts in the first inning.
But in the fifth inning, the game unraveled for the Pirates. Shortstop Gavin Lux singled to right-center with one out. Ranging to his right, Gregory Polanco failed to make the play, the ball trickling under his glove, and Lux motored to third base on the error.
That mattered because of what happened next. Against the Dodgers — which means that every run matters — manager Derek Shelton played his outfield in, close enough to potentially throw Lux out at home on a fly ball.
That burned the Pirates when left fielder AJ Pollock doubled to the warning track. Reynolds tracked back, dove and nearly made a sensational play. But he came up inches short. Reynolds would’ve been positioned deeper, with a much easier time making the catch, had Polanco kept the Lux single in front of him.
Buehler made the second out, which really should’ve been the third, and the Dodgers got another run on Betts’ triple, when he whacked a hanging slider from Brubaker. After Shelton turned to Chasen Shreve, first baseman Max Muncy upped the Dodgers’ lead to 3-0 when his single found a hole through a shifted Pirates infield.
Second baseman Chris Taylor put the icing on the cake with a loud homer over the North Side Notch in the sixth, the two-run shot making it a 5-0 game. It was a predictable outcome after Chris Stratton left a spinning slider at the top of the zone.
That should’ve been the second home run of the game had Hayes not committed what is amazingly only the second biggest blunder for the Pirates this season.
After it looked like the rookie third baseman had snuck a 346-foot drive just inside the foul pole, the Dodgers argued that Hayes missed first base and appealed. The umpires agreed, and Hayes — whose left foot definitely missed the bag by a couple inches — was called out.
It was the second mishap of the season involving the Pirates and first base. During a game on May 29, Will Craig (since designated for assignment) got flustered when Cubs shortstop Javier Baez ran back toward home, the Pirates first baseman inexplicably chasing Baez.
Hayes’ homer-that-wasn’t had to be frustrating for the Pirates because it sort of set a sour tone. Perhaps the game unfolds differently if he touched first base. Also, it’s not just on Hayes. First-base coach Tarrik Brock has to be watching that.
It was a frustrating night for Hayes, who singled in the third but was thrown out trying to advance to second on a fly out to left, overshooting the bag and paying the price.
Had Hayes touched first, stayed on second or if Polanco would have simply fielded a routine base hit, who knows what would have happened, especially after the Pirates started to rally with Buehler out of the game.
Phillip Evans led off the eighth with a single and scored on Adam Frazer's double, which extended his hitting streak to 11 games. In the ninth, Bryan Reynolds and Michael Perez both hit solo homers to cut the deficit to two.
Close enough, of course, to only make the preventable miscues hurt more.
