Errors, depleted bullpen doom Pirates against the Brewers 6-1

Oneil Cruz was a liability rather than an asset today, and Ke’Bryan Hayes and Yohan Ramirez weren’t much help either as the Pirates dropped the rubber game in the Brewers series 6-1.

Starter Zach Thompson had a respectable outing, and the Pirates got on the board in the fourth inning first courtesy of this guy:

That was the Pirates' only offense, and we know what tends to happen when the Pirates only have one run.

Manny Banuelos relieved Thompson in the fifth inning, and an error by Hayes led to Tyrone Taylor scoring (Banuelos had walked him). Banuelos made it out of that inning despite loading the bases and an intentional walk of Hunter Renfroe to get to Kolten Wong. Newly called-up Miguel Yajure came in after Banuelos in the sixth, only to get handicapped from the start when Cruz overthrew Michael Chavis on what should have been an easy Keston Hiura groundout. Hiura then advanced on another groundout and scored on a fielder’s choice by Kevin Newman. “Oh, you want to get the definite out,” opined Bob Walk. “We have three more innings to score.”

I’m an optimist, too, but come on, these are the 2022 Pirates we’re talking about, who have a hard time scoring under the best of circumstances and rarely get out of the hole they dig for themselves. It didn’t help that the bullpen was depleted because of call-ups and paternity leave. Pirates newbie Yohan Ramirez replaced Yajure after the latter gave up a couple of singles, a wild pitch and a walk in the seventh inning, which resulted in another run. Ramirez’s Pirates debut was not great; he proceeded to walk the next three batters, which resulted in two more runs. The other pitcher noob, Robert Stephenson, came into the game in the eighth. At least he didn’t walk anyone.

After last night’s game where we saw so much promise, this game, in the words of a Twitter commenter, stung.