PITTSBURGH -- The mood in the Pirates’ clubhouse on Tuesday, Chris Archer admitted, was “a little somber.” The club learned earlier in the day about the arrest of closer Felipe Vázquez and had just met to discuss how it must move forward in a professional manner.
“We still have to find a way to go out and play a baseball game tonight,” Bucs manager Clint Hurdle said roughly three hours before first pitch. “It’s meaningful to a lot of people. It’s meaningful to them.”
But the Pirates took the field without their three best hitters -- the injured Josh Bell and Starling Marte and the resting Bryan Reynolds -- and went down quietly in a 6-0 loss to the Mariners on Tuesday night at PNC Park. It was the Pirates’ fourth straight loss, as they were swept by the Cubs -- and outscored, 47-15 -- over the weekend at Wrigley Field.
“You do the best you can with what you’ve got and with where you are,” Hurdle said postgame. “We had a couple opportunities tonight to push some things and we didn’t get it done.”
The performance of starter Mitch Keller qualified as a bright spot for the Pirates, especially considering the way things went for their rotation in Chicago and the emotional day they experienced before first pitch.
There was an uneasy feeling in the clubhouse Tuesday afternoon, Archer admitted, and the Vázquez news was “in our mind, there’s no hiding that,” even as they prepared to play. But Keller said that he was able to block everything else out when he took the mound.
“Definitely a weird situation throughout the day, but once the game comes, everyone was focused on the game and focused on what’s going on out there because we’re trying to compete and do the best that we can,” Keller said. “You’ve just got to put it aside for that game. When I was out there, the thought didn’t even cross my mind.”
Keller, Pittsburgh’s No. 1 prospect, struck out seven and allowed only two runs over five innings. He wasn’t efficient, needing 95 pitches to get through his start, but he continued to show strikeout stuff that should bode well for his future despite a 7.74 ERA through 10 starts.
Over 43 innings in the Majors, Keller has recorded 58 strikeouts. He made Seattle whiff with three different pitches on Tuesday -- his curveball, fastball and slider -- and even mixed in six changeups.
“Fastball command was a little shaky sometimes, but I felt really good,” Keller said. “Everything felt really sharp. I felt like I could get guys out with any pitch that I threw tonight.”
Keller avoided big innings, but two sequences cost him. In the second inning, Omar Narváez singled to left, moved to third on an Austin Nola double to right and scored on Dee Gordon’s sacrifice fly. In the fifth inning, opposing starter Marco Gonzales doubled to right and scored on Shed Long’s single to left.
“The leadoff double there to start that inning, if that doesn’t happen, I feel like that inning goes a little bit different and I can get out of there maybe with fewer pitches and maybe go back out for the sixth,” Keller said. “Other than that, I feel pretty good.”
Still, Keller exited with the Pirates trailing by only two runs -- a welcome change of pace after the starters gave up a combined 24 runs while working only nine innings against the Cubs last series. Pittsburgh’s bullpen couldn’t keep this one close, either, however. Right-hander Michael Feliz gave up back-to-back homers in the sixth, and recently acquired lefty Williams Jerez surrendered two more runs in the seventh.
At this point, the Pirates are looking for anything positive they can find heading into next season, and they’d like to believe that Keller will be one of them.
“You’re always looking for things to build on. Tonight, he managed the game,” Hurdle said. “The pitch count was not his friend. However, he managed the game. He kept them to one run in the innings they scored. A couple two-out situations, he put them away. ... I think there were a number of positives to pull away from it.”