PITTSBURGH — Sitting at his locker last week in the National League All-Stars clubhouse, Pittsburgh outfielder Bryan Reynolds leaned back and considered the claustrophobic games that are likely to define the mosh pit of teams in the NL Central.
He called them “nitty, gritty.”
He referred to them as “very tight.”
He remarked how every game just feels “back and forth” and “really close.”
He saw Monday coming.
Then he put his cleats where his claim was.
A taut pitchers duel unwound ever so slightly in the eighth inning Monday night at PNC Park as Reynolds took second base on a wild pitch to get himself into scoring position. That meant the single that followed was enough to push the Pirates to a 2-1 victory against the Cardinals. The hit that decided the game was a ground-ball single by Nick Gonzales that would not have produced a run if not for John King’s wild pitch.
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Such was the difference in a game dictated early by starters Andre Pallante and Mitch Keller and decided late by Pittsburgh’s foolproof bullpen. In the middle, the Cardinals threw out a runner at the plate to keep the score tied 1-1. The only run the Cardinals managed came on a single swing from Nolan Gorman for a homer that tied the game in the fifth.
The Cardinals had one base runner in the final four innings. Aroldis Chapman pitched a perfect eighth, and closer David Bednar ducked around a two-out single to secure the game and his 18th save of the season.
Reynolds greeted lefty King with a leadoff single in the eighth. He scampered to second on the wild pitch, and Gonzales’ single to right brought him home. The Pirates went 2 for 13 with runners in scoring position, but in the “nitty gritty” confines of these NL Central tussles, those two were enough when the Cardinals mustered only three at-bats with a runner in scoring position and no hits.
Pallante tightens grip on role
With a week remaining before the July 30 trade deadline and the Cardinals eyeballing the market for available starting pitching, Pallante continued to improve his claim to remaining a starter.
Pallante pitched through the sixth inning for the third consecutive game and echoed his previous start against the Pirates. In his 13 innings this month as a starter against the Bucs, Pallante has allowed two runs on three hits and coaxed 25 groundballs. The Pirates paired Andrew McCutchen’s double with Oneil Cruz’s two-out single for a 1-0 lead on Pallante in the third inning as his pitch count started to bloat.
He then retired 10 of the next 11 batters he faced.
When the Cardinals tied the game, Pallante was at his best and most efficient. Immediately after Gorman’s homer to level the score, Pallante pitched a perfect fifth inning on eight pitches. He did not allow a Pirate to get the ball out of the infield — let alone reach base — after Gorman’s homer. When he turned the game over to the bullpen in the seventh, Pallante had allowed one run on three hits through six innings and he routinely touched 97 mph with two different fastballs, one he uses to elevate and the other that sinks.
He trimmed his overall ERA for the season below 4.00.
After going to Class AAA Memphis to reinvent himself as a starter and workshop pitches he could use to get right-handed batters out, Pallante has returned to become something other than the reliever he was. He’s the young pitcher the Cardinals have been working to develop. In nine starts for them this season, he has averaged more than five innings a start and struck out 38 in 47⅓ innings. His ERA in the rotation is 3.42.
Gorman seeks groove
Going into the All-Star break, slugger Gorman had been spiraling through one of the more difficult stretches of his career, his batting average dipping to .187 as June ended. He still maintained a lead on the team for home runs by mixing some flashes of power in the prolonged stretches of strikeouts.
He’s powered out of the break with some of those same swings.
Gorman’s second hit since the break was a whip-quick lash that hugged the right-field line and carried over the Clemente Wall to tie Monday’s game. Gorman’s homer was his 19th of the season to regain the team lead that Alec Burleson had tied. Gorman drilled a breaking ball from Keller and sent it an estimated 362 feet. Both of Gorman’s hits coming out of the break have been home runs, and around one in Atlanta he has bracketed five strikeouts.
“I hope the break serves him well — getting away,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “It’s no secret he was in a funk and he’s trying to find his way out of it. He had a little stretch where it was starting to look better. Our hope is that we come out of this break ... in a better spot.”
Keller gives Cardinals a glimpse
What buoys the Pirates’ claim as a contender this season goes far beyond rookie Paul Skenes and his early, All-Star dominance on the mound. All around him is an underrated pitching staff that has proven it can carry innings from the rotation and shorten games from the bullpen.
Keller, the veteran of the rotation, entered Monday with 10 wins.
Though he’d had zero success vs. the Cardinals. The only team to beat Keller twice so far this season was the Cardinals, and he was not involved in the decision Monday. In his two starts against them, the Cardinals had bruised his line for nine earned runs in 11 innings. In his 17 starts this season against teams not named the Cardinals, he had a 3.05 ERA in 103⅓ innings.
The Cardinals got a chance to see Monday what the other clubs do from Keller. The right-hander escaped a second-inning jam with a series of groundouts. He didn’t miss bats as much as invite the Cardinals not to miss fielders. Keller limited the Cardinals to Gorman’s homer and five other hits in his seven innings.