Tim Benz: Patchwork Pirates, odd MLB season deliver as advertised over first weekend

The first weekend of Major League Baseball in the coronavirus era was exactly as advertised — not just for the local team but league-wide.

From an MLB perspective, viewers across the country quickly got used to cardboard cutout fans, manufactured crowd noise and runners beginning extra innings at second base.

It was all so strange that National League teams using the designated hitter against each other in the regular season was barely noticeable as an oddity.

Actually, the Pirates were at the center of one of the stranger scenes of the weekend on Sunday. That’s when manager Derek Shelton got into a socially distanced, masked-up argument with home plate umpire Jordan Baker.

Manager and umpire arguments in 2020 are just a tad different than normal.

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“We were trying to stay distanced, which we both were aware of,” Shelton explained after the game. “His mask broke midway through it so I wanted to make sure my mask stayed up. He was great. He handled it professionally.

“We were both in an unknown area.”

That exchange started because Baker was hearing Derek Holland yapping. The Pirates pitcher was complaining about balls and strikes from the dugout — maybe something Baker wouldn’t have even heard if there were fans in the stands. So he ejected Holland.

And Shelton came out to defend his player but didn’t get tossed himself.

So now Holland has an ejection as a Pirate before he even has an appearance. And Shelton had his first masked argument before he even got his first managerial win.

Yup, 2020 indeed.

Fortunately for Shelton, though, that victory came later in the afternoon as his Pirates salvaged the final game of a three-game series in St. Louis 5-1.

“I got a pretty severe beer shower,” Shelton said of the celebratory treatment he received from his players. “And anybody who knows me, knows I’m (ticked) we wasted that much beer.”

For as strange as we thought the games would be, it was fun at least to have real sports to watch.

And for as tidy of an effort as the Pirates put together Sunday, the series on the whole was a pretty good summation of what people were expecting from this group.

• The top six in this lineup will hit its way to victory on certain days to grab a win if the starting pitching is good enough.

• That starting pitching may not be good enough, more often than not.

• Mitch Keller might be figuring it out, though.

• You never know what you are going to get from that bullpen: who is going to pitch, when they are going to get called into the game or how well/poorly they are going to perform.

Sunday’s contest was the outlier of the bunch as the Pirates get to open the home portion of their schedule with at least one win under their belts.

“A really well-played game,” Shelton said. “Keller threw the ball well. A couple home runs early. We executed all the way around. We caught the ball.

“It was good to see.”

They did what they couldn’t do enough of in the first two games: they generated some power. Colin Moran and Jose Osuna hit home runs. Phillip Evans and Jacob Stallings doubled. That’s four extra-base hits after just one in the first two games combined.

Keller left the game with a lead in the fifth inning, yielding only one earned run, and kept the ball in the yard. Trevor Williams and Joe Musgrove both gave up three runs apiece and allowed home runs along the way in their initial starts.

There weren’t any errors. That happened in each of the first two games.

The bullpen was outstanding after numerous misadventures the first two contests. JT Brubaker, Michael Feliz and Nick Burdi tossed four scoreless innings, combining for eight strikeouts and no walks.

“I wouldn’t have dreamt of it any other way,” Brubaker said. “To watch the command and the shutdown stuff that he had. To come in behind him, he put me in a position where I had success.”

Shelton may have defended the bullpen’s performance the first two games, but Sunday afternoon was a far cry from Kyle Crick and Robbie Erlin combining to allow six runs on Saturday, and Richard Rodriguez getting into another home run-allowed rhythm Friday.

Now the Pirates come back to PNC Park for a “home opener,” that won’t be open. The Milwaukee Brewers visit Monday night after losing two of three against the Cubs in Chicago.

The usual party atmosphere at the stadium won’t be in existence with fans barred from attending. And it appears the Pirates will be starting off the home slate with Steven Brault and “piggyback”-to-be-named-later.

But with all weirdness associated with 2020 baseball starting to normalize, none of that should be a big deal either.