PITTSBURGH -- Sonny Gray struggled in his Reds debut on Sunday, lasting only 2 2/3 innings, but manager David Bell was still encouraged by what he saw, noting Gray's stuff "wasn't as sharp" as he knew it will be.
On Friday night at PNC Park, the stuff was sharper than it's been in a while. Gray sat down 16 in a row after a first-inning single as he cruised through six innings. But one mistake -- a curveball down the middle to Jung Ho Kang -- helped the Pirates take the lead, and they went on to win, 2-0.
After walking four batters in Sunday's start, also against the Pirates, Gray settled in on the road to prevent a single free pass. It was the second time Gray didn't allow a walk in a start since the end of the 2016 season; the other came on June 1, 2018, against the Orioles.
"I just feel like he was much sharper with his pitches," Bell said of Gray. "He was getting ahead. He was commanding really all of his pitches. His breaking ball had a little more bite to it and, just overall, he was much more comfortable today than he was the first time out."
He allowed only three hits and struck out seven batters, four of which came on his curveball. Gray mixed his four pitches -- a two-seamer, four-seamer, curveball and slider -- almost evenly throughout his start with relative ease. Even Pirates manager Clint Hurdle saw the marked difference from the up-and-down pitcher in pinstripes last season with New York.
"It was a completely different cat. This is the guy that you game plan for," Hurdle said. "This is the guy that did all the big-time pitching in Oakland. Fastball with downhill plane. Not a big guy in stature, but he was getting the fastball down. He was keeping it low, and the curveball was a factor tonight for him. Whether it was for chase or for strikes, there was great late tilt to it. There was no hard contact, really, until we were able to scratch that run in the seventh."
Even making it deep into the seventh was a big step forward for Gray. The last time he reached 6 2/3 innings was June 25, 2018, against the Rays, and he reached that point only three times in 23 starts that season. Friday's success is a reassurance for the Reds after signing Gray to a three-year, $30.5 million contract extension this offseason.
But as with Luis Castillo on Wednesday, just a couple of pitches were enough to allow the game-winning run. On his first pitch of the seventh inning, Gray hung a curveball against Starling Marte, and three batters later, Kang knocked in the game-winning run on a curveball in the middle of the zone.
"At the end of the day, I want to say it was a good outing," Gray said, "but you come away and lose a ballgame, that's all that really matters. Come away losing a ballgame, and it's not fun."
Offense streaking in wrong direction
For the third straight night and fourth time this season, the Reds were shut out by their opponent. It extended a run-scoring drought to 28 innings, the longest for the club since Aug. 5-8, 2015.
Joey Votto and Eugenio Suarez provided power to try to end that spell, doubling in the first and second innings, respectively. But Yasiel Puig's hard line-drive double play ball ended the first, and Joe Musgrove struck out two in the second on his way to eight strikeouts on the night.
The Reds had just one hit the rest of the game. Their 34 hits are the fewest in the Majors, and they've averaged 1.57 runs per game in their first seven bouts.
"You can't really dwell on it. I don't really know what else to say," Bell said. "Our job is not to dwell on those things. We're trained [that way] and all our players are.
"It's why they're here, because they don't dwell on this, and they come out, they continue to work and work their way through it. We believe in them, and it's pretty much that simple for us."