PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) \u2013 As the Cubs went 28 games over .500 lifetime at PNC Park, the 11-0 Pirates loss not only was the third in a row, but a kick in the teeth as every homestand gets bigger, especially against potential playoff teams.<\/p>\n
Chicago got five of those runs Saturday night off ace Paul Skenes after the Bucs wasted another great start from Jared Jones on Friday in a 10-inning loss.<\/p>\n
Skenes was dominant through four and a third striking out nine, but allowed four straight hits to give up three runs and then another two runs as Isaac Mattson allowed both of Skenes inherited runners and three more of his own to score in the sixth inning.<\/p>\n
Most of the month of July has been discussed as an important stretch for weeks given the opponents. The Pirates did respond winning two of three in Washington, sweeping the Brewers, two of three in Cleveland, but now losses in four of five games with the trade deadline approaching.<\/p>\n
After overcoming them initially, injuries and a couple of hitting draughts, have hampered the offense scoring TWO runs in the last three games. Brandon Lowe didn\u2019t start on Saturday, but has driven in one run since July 7. Ryan O\u2019Hearn has three RBIs during the same period. Bryan Reynolds has only one hit in his last six games.<\/p>\n
The good news is it appears 1B Spencer Horwitz and C Endy Rodriguez are close to returning and Oneil Cruz is expected back in a few weeks, although that date is moved back from the original diagnosis. The trade deadline could provide a boost and this season, just when it appeared all is going south for the Pirates, they\u2019ve responded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the team has been very resilient,\u201d said Pirates manager Don Kelly pregame Saturday. \u201cWe\u2019ve dealt with injuries as all teams do, especially offensively and losing Sisk, continued to compete at a high level. We need keep doing that, every single day, regardless of what happened the day before.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been three straight bad \u2018day before\u2019 performances. <\/p>\n
Skenes believes even with the stakes being raised this time of year, his team will respond again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we do a really good job of blocking out the noise,\u201d Skenes said postgame Saturday. \u201cI\u2019ll ask guys where we\u2019re at (in the standings). Nobody really knows a lot of the time where we\u2019re at in the standings or stuff like that. I think a lot of guys just don\u2019t pay attention to it.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s kind of indicative if we play our game, play the way we should, we\u2019re a playoff team. We\u2019re going to be right where we should come October. It doesn\u2019t really matter what anyone else does.\u201d<\/p>\n
Will this team pick itself up again?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) \u2013 As the Cubs went 28 games over .500 lifetime at PNC Park, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4662,29828,34762,1423,22146,73,75,74,10997],"class_list":["post-252174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-baseball","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-don-kelly","tag-mlb","tag-paul-skenes","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-pirates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}