With just over three weeks left in the regular season, Pirates manager Derek Shelton wants his young core to continue learning.
For many of the players on Pittsburgh's roster, they’re playing in their first full season in the Major Leagues and are finding their footing in a team that is in a rebuilding phase. The wins have been scarce this season, with the latest instance being the 5-1 loss to the Tigers in the series finale at PNC Park on Wednesday night.
"We've been in the learning process of what we're doing and because of the fact that we're able to give multiple people different opportunities in different roles,” said Shelton during his pregame Zoom call with reporters. “It's just going to continue to learn … just continuing to gain information on how our guys are developing.”
The Pirates were in position to clinch their first series sweep of the season after they came from behind to beat the Tigers on Monday and Tuesday. While Pittsburgh hasn’t been an overwhelming force in the standings this season, some of its most competitive games have come against Detroit. The Bucs had defeated the Tigers in four of five games and had held them to 14 runs entering Wednesday.
The Pirates' offense couldn't match the Tigers' big hits, however as they posted six hits -- two being extra-base knocks -- and went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position, while leaving five runners on base. Pittsburgh is now 0-for-12 when the team has a chance to sweep its opponent.
The top three in the Pirates’ lineup went 3-for-11 while No. 8 hitter Kevin Newman collected two hits in the series finale, a far stretch from the 22 hits the Bucs recorded in the first two games against Detroit.
"I don't put a whole lot of stock into it and it's not really something that consumes much of my thoughts,” catcher Jacob Stallings said of the Pirates' inability to sweep a series this season. “It just hasn't worked out. I think more of what is frustrating is just our overall win-loss record. I think when you have a bad record, it's hard to sweep teams. It doesn't really bother me that much. I wish we had, but I don't really think about it too much.”
Right-handed starting pitcher Mitch Keller recorded his 12th start of the season in which he pitched at least five innings, as he struck out six hitters and allowed only one walk. Though the Tigers tagged Keller for four runs, the 25-year-old managed to record a 24 percent called-strike/whiff ratio on his 86 pitches.
The outing further dented Keller’s record to 4-11, but Shelton saw signs in Keller’s improvement to maintain his composure and limit damage.
"I don't think it's a continuation of good [or] bad. Actually, I thought he threw the ball pretty well,” Shelton said. “He had one walk, it was a 3-2 breaking ball that backed up to [Jonathan] Schoop. He threw a fastball above the zone to a guy that is going into the Hall of Fame whenever he retires, [Miguel Cabrera] took a good swing at it.”
Keller fired 57 strikes to the Tigers while keeping most of them in the strike zone. Though he was getting hard contact early in the game -- as Detroit recorded 10 of its 12 hits off him -- Shelton noted that the results were much more different than the beginning of the season.
"From where he's come from, I think we would rather him be in the zone too much right now because of the fact that he did continue to attack, he did continue to execute,” Shelton said of Keller’s progress over his past couple of starts. “My feeling on it is Mitch earlier in the year, a couple of those innings we would have seen a bad pitch and that would have turned into a four-run inning. He was able to minimize damage, and I think that's definitely a sign of growth.”
Keller echoed his skipper’s sentiments. In his past 11 innings, he’s only given up four runs while striking out 14 and allowing one walk. Keller has a handful of starts left in the season, but his progress in his recent outings can be the foundation for what’s to come.
"I thought I threw pretty well," Keller said. "I thought I made pretty good pitches, [but] balls found holes and just didn't go my way. Looking back, I was talking to [Stallings] after I got taken out and I said, 'I don't think I'd change anything that we did tonight.' I thought we executed our game plan that we wanted to do, and [it] just didn't go our way."