Some pregame fun helps Pirates end slump 

PITTSBURGH -- Mired in a rough stretch of baseball, the Pirates took the field a little earlier for their pregame warmups on Friday. It wasn’t a punishment, nor was it a test. It was a full 26-man roster full of guys looking to have a moment of fun before they locked back into their routines.

“They came to me on the plane the other day,” manager Derek Shelton said. “They wanted to do something different. They wanted to compete against each other.”

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Tyler Anderson pitched the idea. The pitchers played the field as a mix of hurlers and position players took at-bats, inning by inning, in an odd spectacle of a simulated game. Chase De Jong made an unbelievable diving grab. Ben Gamel hit one to the Allegheny River off the pitching machine, then Adam Frazier lifted a walk-off blast to right field.

Whatever the rhyme or reason, the Pirates looked as free and easy as they have all year a few hours later, as they unloaded in the first inning and sixth innings, then held on for an 11-10 win over Cleveland at PNC Park.

It was far from pretty. Up 11-1 after six innings, the bullpen largely imploded. Sam Howard gave up six runs in the seventh inning. Kyle Crick was tagged with three (two earned) in the eighth after Clay Holmes allowed a single to René Rivera, which cleared the bases after a throwing error charged to Bryan Reynolds. Then, Richard Rodríguez allowed baserunners to reach second and third base, but struck out Bobby Bradley to lock down a much-needed save.

“I felt comfortable with Richie out there on the mound in the ninth,” Shelton said. “He's done a nice job all year, regardless of if it's a three-run lead, four-run lead, one-run lead, and he got it done, which was important.”

But the early outburst was enough to carry the day, and the Pirates started right on time with the first three batters reaching safely, the first run scoring on a groundout, then Jacob Stallings plating a pair with a double.

Next came Gregory Polanco. He hasn’t had much success this season, and he didn’t have as much luck during the pregame competition as others either. In one at-bat, he flied out and threw his bat down in frustration. Or, at least, what he wanted to convey was frustration, but he quickly turned and gave a smile to Rodríguez, seated atop a crate of baseballs.

However, Polanco was the first Pirate to take Cleveland starter J.C. Mejía deep, cranking a Statcast-estimated 410-foot blast over the Clemente Wall to cap the five-run first inning.

The large tack-on in the sixth inning was markedly different. Aside from a single by Kevin Newman, four of the first five Pirates to reach base did so on a walk (3) or a hit by pitch (1) to set up a bases-clearing double by Ke'Bryan Hayes.

“To our guys' credit, to our offense's credit, we got runs early,” Shelton said.

It was barely enough, but whether one run or 10 runs, the Pirates will take any win they can. Even a close one feels good after dropping nine of their 10 games over the recent stretch by a deficit of three runs or fewer.

“It just felt like we’ve lost in some tough ways,” said Chad Kuhl, who faced the minimum through five innings, then finished with one run over six. “And to finally win, no matter how it looked at the end of that, is a really good feeling.”

At the outset of the season, Shelton said this season would be a journey, and he knows that there are going to be “dark times” in that journey. He said all along he believed in the work the Pirates were putting in every day, even during the 10-game losing streak.

“We need to find solutions for how we need to be better, and that’s what we’re doing,” Shelton said. “That’s what our staff is thinking about every day. At times, it doesn’t look like that, but we trend that way.”

It also doesn’t hurt to have a little bit of fun to try to shake any semblance of an uncertain outlook after so many losses in a row. Perhaps, that’s what put a stop to things.

“That helped, because we enjoyed it,” Polanco said. “We forgot what we went through, whatever happened. We just came here today and said, ‘Let’s go have fun and play this game. We play. We enjoy it. Let’s do it in practice.’

“And you see what happened tonight.”