PHILADELPHIA -- Once his night was officially over, Mitch Keller took a seat next to Radley Haddad, the Pirates’ game planning and strategy coach. Haddad offered his congratulations. In the fifth, Keller recorded his 210th strikeout of the season, surpassing A.J. Burnett (209) for the most punchouts in a single season by a right-handed pitcher in franchise history.
Keller, though, looked beyond the individual achievement. He looked toward the opposing dugout.
Following Keller’s departure, Pittsburgh lost, 3-2, in the 10th inning on Johan Rojas’ game-winning single, a hit that clinched Philadelphia’s spot in the postseason. The Phillies celebrated. The Pirates watched. A year from now, they envision being on the other end -- popping their own champagne, forming their own mosh pits, basking in their own successes.
“He was telling me how proud he was of me,” Keller said, “but I was like, ‘Dude, we’re going to do something special next year. We’re going to be this team next year.’ ‘This team,’ as in the Phillies. We’re going to be the team that’s clinching. He was like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to do something really special.’
“We can all feel it. We want to be those teams. Playing baseball against teams that are making the playoffs and pushing against them, we’re right there. We’re beating them and playing good baseball against them, so there’s no reason why we can’t do it.”
In the micro, in front of a quasi-playoff crowd, Pittsburgh looked less like a team that’s nine games under par and more like a team firmly in the mix for a Wild Card, going blow-for-blow with a Phillies squad that will be playing October baseball.
Keller ended up with a quality start -- six innings, six strikeouts, two runs -- and carried a no-hitter into the sixth. (Keller appeared to experience arm discomfort with his first pitch of the sixth, but he clarified that he’d hit his funny bone on the follow-through). With the Pirates trailing by two, Bryan Reynolds and Henry Davis delivered a pair of solo shots in the seventh and eighth, respectively. Dauri Moreta, Ryan Borucki and Carmen Mlodzinski held the Phillies scoreless following Keller’s departure. Mlodzinski, in particular, recorded one of the biggest strikeouts of his career, punching out Nick Castellanos looking with the winning run on second in the ninth to force free baseball.
But Philadelphia simply executed more than Pittsburgh in the 10th. In the top of the frame, the Pirates couldn’t get across a single run. In the bottom of the frame, Rojas beat two-time All-Star David Bednar on a well-placed fastball, sending a grounder up the middle and the Phillies to the playoffs.
“You never want to see a team celebrate going into the postseason, but with what our aspirations are and with a bunch of young players, you get a little bit of a chance for them to see, ‘OK, this is what it’s all about,’” said manager Derek Shelton.
Added Davis: “When you see someone have success or an organization have the success that you’re looking forward to and chasing, it’s a feeling … I really don’t know how to describe it, honestly. It kinda sucks, but it gives you something to focus on.”
In the medium, Tuesday night was not the only occasion in which the Pirates have hung with the National League’s best. They took two of three from the Cubs in Chicago, then took two of three from the Reds in Cincinnati. Both teams are fighting for a Wild Card. Pittsburgh took two of three from the Brewers, the NL Central champions, earlier this month as well.
In the macro, the Pirates have played some of their finest ball of Shelton and general manager Ben Cherington’s tenures over the past couple months. Since the All-Star break, they’re 33-34. Since August, they’re 27-25. With five games remaining, they’ve won 12 more games than last year.
“I think that’s the direction that everybody in this room wants to be in,” Bednar said. “We want to be on the other end of it. The past couple weeks, we’ve been playing really good baseball. I think that’s very important to finish this season strong, go through the ups and downs, learn how to compete, learn how to win as a team and get those team wins, be on the right side of those one-run ballgames.”
Playing well over 2 1/2 months will not equate to playing well over a full year. For all their strides, areas of weakness remain. Tuesday showed that, and the season has shown that. They’ll need their existing young core to take a step forward. They’ll need prospects to push their way to the Majors. They’ll need a certain 6-foot-7 shortstop to come back healthy. They’ll likely need external additions, too.
Those are concerns for another day. All the Pirates could do on this day, though, is internalize the sights, the sounds: see the celebration, hear the crowd, feel the vibrations. The next 12 months will tell if the Phillies’ fortunes, too, shall be theirs.