Pirates bullpen blows another lead, wastes Joe Musgrove's 11-strikeout performance

Frustrated by the feeling he was carrying the weight of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitching staff on his shoulders, Joe Musgrove took a “selfish mentality” to the mound against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Musgrove recorded a career-best 11 strikeouts in six shutout innings, only to see the bullpen blow the lead in the seventh for the second consecutive game. After wasting Mitch Keller’s no-hitter Saturday night, the Pirates let Musgrove’s performance slip away in a 2-1 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on Sunday afternoon at PNC Park.

Musgrove allowed three hits and one walk and left with a 1-0 lead after throwing 94 pitches (62 for strikes), only for the Pirates (15-38) to lose for the 12th time in 13 games. With seven games remaining in this shortened season, Musgrove embodied the team’s every-man-for-himself mantra for the final week.

“I feel like sometimes I get caught up in trying to do things for other people and trying to be the guy on the staff that’s going to turn things around and trying to carry the whole team when I just need to worry about myself,” Musgrove said. “This year hasn’t been what I wanted it to be as a team and individually, and I feel like today I went out there with the mentality of this being for me. I needed to prove to myself that I still have that dog in me, that competitive spirit. That’s been my strongest point for my whole career is the ability to go out and compete, and I feel like I let the way that this season’s gone and my performance affect my ability to go out there and compete and leave it all out there. I feel like that’s what I did.”

After watching Geoff Hartlieb walk two batters and hit a third to start a six-run seventh inning in the 7-2 loss Saturday night, Derek Holland voiced in a pitcher’s meeting the need to be aggressive and attack hitters. When Holland did that in the seventh, it backfired as Matt Carpenter caught the Pirates in a shift by singling through third and Yadier Molina followed by driving Holland’s 2-2 pitch 389 feet into the left-field bleachers for a 2-1 lead.

“He left a slider down and in to a Hall of Famer, and he hit it out,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “That’s what it was. … We left one ball, and he hit it out of the ball park and we lose 2-1.”

Holland (1-3) took the blame, as well as the loss, but didn’t back down from his assertion pitchers need to be aggressive.

“One of the things that I preach to these guys is that you can’t defend a walk,” Holland said. “I know that somebody’s going to come back with the comment that you can’t a defend a home run, either, but you have a better chance to rob that and you also have a better chance of doing something when you’re making the attacks, when you’re going after these guys.”

The Pirates couldn’t do much against Cardinals starter Jack Flaherty (4-2), who allowed two hits and two walks and matched Musgrove’s 11 strikeouts. It marked Flaherty’s ninth career game with double-digit strikeouts. He also had 10 Ks in a 2-0 win over the Pirates on Sept. 8, 2019, giving him double-digit strikeouts in back-to-back wins at PNC Park. Randy Johnson (three), Oliver Perez and Curt Schilling (two each) are the only other pitchers to strike out 10 batters in consecutive starts at PNC Park.

“Flaherty was good,” Shelton said. “His fastball was not what it normally is, but the execution of both the slider and the breaking ball was outstanding, and he went to it a lot early to neutralize us.”

Bryan Reynolds gave the Pirates a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning by hitting a leadoff double, advancing to third on Adam Frazier’s sacrifice bunt and scoring on Colin Moran’s sacrifice fly to center.

Musgrove struck out three of the four batters he faced in the fifth and set a new career best against the first batter in the sixth by getting a called third strike on the outside corner against Paul DeJong. Paul Goldschmidt followed with a ground-rule double down the left-field line, but Musgrove got Brad Miller to fly out to center and Tyler O’Neill swinging for his 11th strikeout. It was the most strikeouts by a Pirates pitcher since Jordan Lyles fanned a dozen in a 5-3 win at the San Diego Padres on May 17, 2019.

The Pirates couldn’t muster a hit against Tyler Webb in the seventh or John Gant in the eighth but had the top of the order up in the ninth. Andrew Miller got Reynolds to pop out to third, Frazier to ground out to second and Moran to strike out to end the game. The Pirates couldn’t get the one hit they needed.

“That’s not the outcome (you want),” said Holland, who surrendered his 12th homer this season. “You see Joe go out there and perform the way he did, you want to give him every chance you can to get that win. Unfortunately, it’s my fault that it didn’t happen. One pitch cost me two runs.”