Pirates Series Takeaways: Vets Set Tone, Walking the Plank, Test Passed

“The stretch that we were in there, it’s tough,” Kelly said postgame on Friday night. “These guys have been through it before. They understand that there are going to be stretches through the season. They can manage the emotions and understand what they need to do to stay within themselves and go out there and perform and produce like they did tonight.”

Here are a couple more takeaways from the series sweep.

Walk the Plank

I’m still in disbelief about what happened in the second inning of Saturday’s game.

The Pirates drew seven straight walks against Reds pitchers Rhett Lowder (three) and Connor Phillips (four). The streak tied the MLB record, which had only happened twice before — once in 1909 and the other time in 1983.

”We were talking about it in the dugout saying that we’ve never seen it before, which it’s never really happened before which is probably why,” Bryan Reynolds said. “I think we’ve been doing a good job of controlling the zone this year.”

The Pirates ended up drawing 11 walks in a 17-7 win on Saturday, the most they’ve had in a game since 2021.

It’s a trend that’s been an important one for the Pirates, who at the conclusion of play on Sunday rank fourth in baseball with 143 walks and fourth in on-base percentage (.339). For perspective, the Pirates had a .305 OBP last year, which was 23rd in MLB.

Passed the Test

At the end of last series, I said that the Pirates’ resiliency would be tested like it hadn’t been all season.

The Pirates had been a resilient bunch, having not dropped back-to-back games since their first two of the season against the Mets in New York. But after being swept by the Cardinals, the Pirates saw a losing streak reach five games.

Test? Passed.

“St. Louis put it on us here, that’s going to happen,” catcher Joey Bart said after Sunday’s win. “That’s the game, it’s ball. It’s always a game of momentum. We didn’t have any momentum last series. It seemed like we came out with momentum. Obviously the offense has been going crazy the first two games and today we hit a stalemate, but we did enough and the pitching kept us in it.”

The Pirates dominated the Reds, who entered the series in first place in the division. They outscored them 27-9. They out-hit them 37-17.

In recent years, the Pirates have been prone to letting a poor stretch of play snowball and get out of control. In their first real test of adversity this season, the Pirates prevented serious damage, and did so emphatically.

“That was a real tough series. To lose four games in a row — five if you go back to Milwaukee — it just shows that we’re a different clubhouse this year,” Konnor Griffin said. “We’re not going to lay down. We’re just going to keep grinding and competing every day.”

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