Pirates collect only 3 hits, but 5-1 loss to Padres offers its share of drama
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The Pittsburgh Pirates managed only three hits in their 5-1 loss to the San Diego Padres on Tuesday night at Petco Park.
Yet the game was not without drama, at least for a few moments in the bottom of the seventh inning.
Pirates relief pitcher Angel Perdomo hit the Padres’ Manny Machado in the back with a 98-mph, four-seam fastball, one batter after Juan Soto homered. Machado had homered way back in the second for the Padres’ first run.
Machado glared at Perdomo while first baseman Carlos Santana stepped in to keep the peace. Perdomo glared back.
After a few moments, the umpires huddled and decided to eject Perdomo, believing he intentionally hit Machado.
Predictably, Pirates manager Derek Shelton protested in earnest, earning the second ejection of the inning.
Perdomo said he’s innocent, and the ejection surprised him.
“I was just trying to come in and I went too far in and I hit him by mistake,” he said on the AT&T SportsNet postgame show through translater Stephen Morales.
”There were no bad intentions behind the pitch. First time it happened to me. They made the decision, and I’m OK with it. Nothing I can do about that.”
Shelton wondered why Perdomo wasn’t warned, which would have allowed him to stay in the game.
”The umpires got together, which they’re supposed to do, and then after they got together, they decided (on) the ejection,” he said. “Personally, I think that’s where a warning comes into play and they initially went to an ejection, which you don’t see a lot. Obviously, that’s their judgement call and I didn’t agree with it.”
The game proceeded without further incident — other than Gary Sanchez’s two-run homer in the eighth — and the Pirates (44-57) lost their 15th game this month against five victories. The Padres (49-53) remained in fourth place in the National League West, 9½ games out of first place.
With a starting lineup nearly half full of rookies, the Pirates confronted one of the game’s best pitchers, and the experience didn’t go well. Blake Snell was as tough on Pirates veterans as he was on their rookies.
Snell, who entered the game as MLB’s ERA leader (2.67), was in control for most of his six innings. But even when he faced trouble with the bases loaded and one out in the fifth, veterans Connor Joe and Bryan Reynolds struck out.
Then, in the seventh with runners on first and second base, Reynolds flied out to left and Soto made a diving catch of Andrew McCutchen’s line drive to left field that ended the threat.
In the first inning, Reynolds was robbed of extra bases when right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. made a lunging catch while crashing against the foul pole. Reynolds was 0 for 8 in the two games against the Padres, his batting average falling to .253.
Overall, the Pirates were 1 for 9 with runners in scoring position.
”We had opportunities,” Shelton said. “(Snell’s) changeup’s probably as good as I’ve seen it. But the biggest thing is when we had runners in scoring position, we went out of the zone and we cannot do that against a pitcher that’s leading the league in ERA.”
The Pirates’ only run scored on a double by rookie Henry Davis that plated Santana in the second inning.
Davis was stranded there when rookie Jared Triolo grounded out to third base, failing to hit the other way and move the runner. Snell ended the inning by getting rookies Nick Gonzales and Liover Peguero out on a ground ball to third and fly to right.
Snell retired the side without allowing a base runner in the first, third and fourth innings. At one point, he put out 10 Pirates in a row on his way to striking out four and surrendering two hits and five walks among his 102 pitches.
One of the hits was Austin Hedges’ 64.3 mph infield single to the left of the mound in the fifth inning that Snell allowed to slip past him. The Pirates had two runners on base in the sixth — thanks to two walks — but Gonzales grounded out to ene the inning.
The Padres scored twice against 43-year-old Pirates starter Rich Hill. In the second inning, Machado hit his 20th home run — 105 mph off the bat — and Sanchez drove in a run with one of seven hits against Hill, who was gone before the end of the fifth.
Hill worked 4 1/3 innings, only the fourth time in 21 starts this season that he didn’t finish the fifth. “I think there was some mis-location that led to balls in the middle of the plate that ended up getting squared up,” Shelton said.
“They certainly have a great lineup,” Hill said. “That team over there is built to win. Unfortunately, I didn’t get it done.”
After singles by Ha-Seong Kim and Tatis Jr. and a walk to Machado loaded the bases in the fifth, Shelton was taking no chances and called on Yerry De Los Santos, who struck out Xander Bogaerts and got Luis Campusano to ground into a force out.
Source: TribLIVE
