The Pittsburgh Pirates are crying about the unusually unfavorable officiating this season. There’s no quick fix.
Pittsburgh dropped the final game of its road series against the Dodgers, 2-5, on Sunday at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Calif. The loss dropped the Pirates to 40-47.
Hitting coach Andy Hines was ejected in the top of the seventh inning. He was ejected by the umpire for protesting a strike call after two batters, Conor Jo and Zack Suwinski, were retired on consecutive groundouts. In particular, the four-pitch changeup that got Suwinski to ground into a double play.
“I’ve never seen him react to a call like that,” Pittsburgh manager Derek Shelton said in his postgame interview, noting that it rattled a hitter who is not easily rattled by calls.
Pittsburgh has seen its share of batters get frustrated with umpire calls this season. There have been four ejections this season, and three of them have come as a result of hitters expressing frustration with the strike zone.
“There’s not much we can do about it,” Shelton said, sighing when a reporter pointed out that Pittsburgh was second in the league in the number of balls called strikes.
Infielder Nick Gonzalez agreed: “It’s tough, but you have to forget about it and focus on the next pitch. You have to take a moment, take your foot off the plate or do whatever it takes to forget about it and move on. It’s part of the game,” he said, adding that there’s nothing you can do about it except forget about it.
Of course, umpire John Lipka’s call wasn’t the reason Pittsburgh didn’t win that game. The reason lay elsewhere. Chief among them was the inability to contain the opposition’s No. 1 and 2 hitters, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.
“They beat us today,” Shelton said, adding, “I thought Oviedo did a good job in the first inning. We just had a couple of bad pitches. Against these hitters, you have to throw every pitch with a plan. Anything up the middle is going to hurt, and actually the home run I gave up to Freeman wasn’t a bad pitch, so that’s a sign of a good hitter,” he said.바카라사이트
“He had a good changeup,” he said of his opponent, Julio Urias, who held him to two runs in the sixth inning. “He’s been inconsistent all season, but today his changeup was as good as I’ve seen it the last two years.”
Pittsburgh finished the series with a 1-3 record, but played well, keeping each game within three runs. “We played well overall against a good team, but we just couldn’t finish,” Shelton said of the four-game series.
Meanwhile, Pittsburgh recalled starting third baseman Keybrian Hayes and demoted right-hander Roanjee Contreras ahead of tonight’s game. Contreras had pitched 68 1/3 innings in 19 games this season with a 6.59 ERA. He began the season as a starter, but was demoted to the bullpen midseason and eventually sent down to the minors.
When asked about the reasoning behind Contreras’ demotion, Shelton simply said, “We had to get Hayes back.” When asked what to do with Contreras in Triple-A, Shelton said, “We’ll decide later.”