Trevor Cahill’s debut with the Pirates on Tuesday did not go as he planned, and it set the tone for a woeful performance against the Reds in a 14-1 loss at Great American Ball Park.
Cahill lasted only four innings in his start, allowing seven runs on nine hits. Two of them were homers by Tyler Naquin, who led off the game with a Statcast-projected 454-foot blast off a hanging changeup, then cranked a three-run homer in the second on a cutter that didn’t cut inside, en route to an seven-RBI game.
“I’ll give up the solo shot in the first,” Cahill said. “I’m not worried about it. It was more the pitches with runners on base. Just feels like any time I was trying to put somebody away, I put the ball up. And there were a couple of mistakes that actually could have been hit that weren’t hit.”
The right-hander, whom the Pirates signed to a one-year deal on March 12, didn’t allow a hit off his curveball in 11 appearances (six starts) in 2020. It was a little less effective on Tuesday, generating two called strikes and two whiffs to eight balls, which made it much harder to command the zone with his other pitches.
“We saw it with his breaking balls today,” manager Derek Shelton said. “Just wasn’t as sharp as he normally is, and he had trouble finishing it. And when he did finish it, it was short.”
Behind Cahill, the bullpen showed its first true struggles of the year after Cahill, which began with a five-run appearance by Clay Holmes in the fifth, in which he recorded only one out. Though he allowed two runs, Duane Underwood gave the Pirates length out of the ‘pen with 2 1/3 innings.
The Pirates avoided a shutout thanks to Phillip Evans’ second homer in two games, a solo swat to left-center field in the seventh inning. Evans also pitched the eighth inning, recording three outs on five pitches. Though he got his recent string of starts due to Ke’Bryan Hayes’ left wrist injury, he’s making a push for more playing time in an offense that’s gone cold, especially on Tuesday.
“Can't let the scoreboard dictate your at-bats, and got to take advantage of every pitch that you see,” Evans said. “You can't be wasting at-bats out there, so that's the approach I've been going for.”
Even with the offense’s struggles, it’s going to be tough to inch back into games as they did vs. the cold-hitting Cubs, who entered Tuesday batting .135, without limiting the amount of runners on base. In the first two games of their series against the Reds, the Pirates’ pitchers have allowed 25 hits and eight walks in 16 innings.
And sooner or later, the Pirates are going to need more length from their starters to provide some relief to their relief corps. The only Pittsburgh starter to complete five innings in the first five games of the season is Tyler Anderson, who went five against the Cubs on Saturday. Though Chad Kuhl and Cahill are still being built up, Mitch Keller, Anderson and JT Brubaker are stretched out to go five or six innings -- assuming the performance is there.
The Pirates will have one more chance vs. the Reds to fine-tune their game before heading to Pittsburgh for the home opener, and given what the first two games have shown, it will be a challenge they’ll have to rise to.
“They’re a hot team with hot bats right now,” Cahill said. “So you’ve got to execute.”