Pittsburgh – Coming off four encouraging starts before the All-Star break and facing the National League’s worst offensive team in a stadium where he’s enjoyed a lot of success in over the years, things seemed aligned well for Jack Flaherty Monday night.
“I’ve never struggled in this park before,” Flaherty said afterward. “I’ve never pitched bad here.”
Never say never.
The Pittsburgh Pirates scored three runs in the second inning and chased Flaherty after three innings. And those three runs were plenty for their ace Paul Skenes.
The All Star right-hander and front-runner for the National League Cy Young award blanked the Tigers for six innings and the lowly Pirates beat the Tigers, 3-0, in the first of three at PNC Park.
The Tigers (60-41) were shutout for the seventh time this season and second time in four games. They’ve scored three runs in the first four games of this road trip.
“Skenes is a tough measuring stick,” Tigers’ manager AJ Hinch said when asked about the persistent offensive lull. “He’s really good.”
Fair point. Skenes struck out six and allowed only three hits.
But Flaherty has been good of late, too. Which is why this one felt so odd. He’s 5-1 at PNC Park with an ERA of 2.23. He’s 10-1 overall in his career against the Pirates and hadn’t lost to them since 2018. And this current version of the black and gold ranks last in the National League in runs, homers, RBI, batting average and OPS.
For Flaherty, though, this ended up being a paradoxical confluence of swing-and-miss stuff with a frustrating inability to finish off at-bats. He struck out five and allowed five singles in two innings.
BOX SCORE: Pirates 3, Tigers 0
“I was in some good counts and the at-bats got long,” he said. “Then a couple of walks get sprinkled in there which has been the theme when the pitch count starts to go up quickly. It was a weird one. I’m still trying to digest it, to be honest.”
The walks came in the second inning and, cause and effect, so did the damage.
With two outs and a runner on first, Flaherty walked No. 9 hitter Isiah Kiner-Falefa on four pitches. Spencer Horwitz followed with an RBI single on an 0-2 pitch. Flaherty then walked Andrew McCutchen to load the bases, setting up a critical battle with Bryan Reynolds.
Flaherty struck Reynolds out on three pitches in the first inning. But he fell behind 3-1 and threw a flat slider that hung over the heart of the plate. Reynolds lashed into right field for a two-run single.
“My stuff was good,” said Flaherty, who got seven whiffs on 11 swings with his knuckle-curve and seven called strikes with his four-seam fastball. “I was getting to two strikes and then let them stick around too long. Or I would fall behind and have to make a pitch. I have to really look at it. It’s not a stuff thing. My stuff was actually really good.”
Catcher Dillon Dingler felt like he wasn’t commanding pitching in the zone as well as he normally does, which led to some of those at-bats where he went from 0-2 to 3-2. Hinch agreed with that assessment, too.
“Just a lot of pitches,” Hinch said, who removed Flaherty after 78 pitches in three innings. “I think it was a lot about four hits with two strikes and the walks. But he hung in there to keep the score where it was. I was glad he held it to three because it felt like it could’ve been worse.”
Getting one run off Skenes is tough, but doable. Getting three to tie, a much taller task. Especially in the hitting funk the Tigers have been in after the break.
“I felt like we put up some tougher at-bats as the game went on,” Hinch said. “But he got into the game pretty easily.”
Skenes set down six straight to start the game, putting up a zero in the first, which he’s remarkably done in all 21 of his starts this season.
But Parker Meadows led off the third with a double and Matt Vierling beat out an infield single. First and second and no out.
“You have to find a way to scratch across a bleeder or a bullet or a big hit to dent what he’s doing,” Hinch said. “He’s going to get his punch-outs. He’s really good at using his elite stuff. But we couldn’t find the big hit.”
Skenes dispatched the next three hitters, first Trey Sweeney and Colt Keith and then, with Meadows at third, he struck out Gleyber Torres.
The last 10 times the Tigers have had runners at first and second with no outs, the next hitter failed to advance or score the runners. That’s a hard way to live.
“I’ve said it before when we’ve gone through these stretches,” Hinch said. “You need back-to-back something to kick start something positive. That 3-0 deficit felt really big with how they were lined up in the bullpen.”
Skenes threw his 98-mph four-seamer 47 times out of 86 pitches. Seven were put in play with just one hit, a single by Spencer Torkelson. He also mixed in changeups, sweepers, splitters, sliders, sinkers and a couple of curveballs – presumably just to amuse himself. He didn’t appear to need much more than the heater.
“With a guy with plus velo like that and the high volume he throws it, you are always going to stay on his heater,” Dingler said. “We have some educated guesses when he’s going to go to his other pitches, but he did a good job keeping us off-balance and throwing it where he wanted to tonight. He’s a really good pitcher.”
But because of some stingy work out of the Tigers’ bullpen – five scoreless innings from lefty Dietrich Enns (2.2 innings), Chase Lee (1.1) and Tommy Kahnle (one clean inning), the Tigers had three innings to break back against the Pittsburgh bullpen.
That didn’t happen, either. The trio of Braxton Ashcroft, Dennis Santana and David Bednar each put up a zero and collecting five strikeouts.
Afterward, as Flaherty was talking through the outing, he kind of stopped and changed course.
“You know what, I try not to overthink things too much,” he said. “I think I can do that a little too much, get a little analytical trying to break down my starts too much. Just focus on making pitches. Throughout the course of my career, I could get a little too analytical and break things down too much.
“Sometimes it just comes down to competing and executing with runners on.”
Sounds like some solid self-advice right there.
@cmccosky
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