CHICAGO — It’s tough to know what to make of Bryse Wilson at the moment.
Perhaps because of the way he started the season, limping out to an 8.29 ERA in his first nine outings of the year, there’s a slight sense that at any moment he may fall apart again.
Take Tuesday’s start in a 4-2 loss to the Chicago Cubs as a perfect example. He got rocked in the first inning, allowing a one-out, bloop single then three straight well-struck doubles to give up three runs in his first five batters faced. For a Pirates team that has struggled to score runs consistently, that’s a troubling way to get out of the gates.
And yet, Wilson just hung around all afternoon. With the help of some good defense, he faced the minimum in the second, then put together a 1-2-3 third inning. A pair of runners reached in the fourth, but Wilson escaped damage, and he didn’t allow another hit in the fifth or sixth. It’s now Wilson’s third quality start in his last four appearances, all coming in July.
It’s not to say Wilson was perfect. His inability to stop the bleeding in the first gave the Cubs all the runs they needed to win, but he ended up pitching well enough that the full brunt of the loss can’t be laid on his shoulders.
Instead, the game is more properly defined by the Pirates’ inability to string a pair of hits together. That was literally true. The Pirates had one hit each in the second, third, fourth and seventh innings but never had multiple in the same frame. The only runs they scored came from an impressive feat of strength from Oneil Cruz. More on that in a moment.
More poetically, in the span of about 20 minutes in the middle of the contest, Cruz presented the entire spectrum of his game. First, there was a defensive adventure. In the top of the sixth, with one out, he corralled a simple grounder at short, then threw a ball about 10 feet over the head of first baseman Josh VanMeter. It didn’t end up hurting the Pirates. He and third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes secured groundouts to end the inning.
If anyone was frustrated by that mishap, though, Cruz more than made up for it in the top of the seventh. On a 1-0 pitch, he took a cutter on the inside part of the plate and demolished it foul down the right field line, out onto Sheffield Avenue beyond the bleachers. It was an impressive feat of strength but also just a loud, long, harmless strike.
So, Cruz left no doubt on the next pitch. He got a fastball down the middle and ripped it 416 feet to dead center for a two-run blast.
It will surprise nobody to hear the Pirates needed much more than just a single impressive play from a promising young prospect to win, though. Cruz played his part, for sure, and Wilson performed better than it originally seemed like he would. But in the bottom of the eighth, when right-hander Wil Crowe allowed a solo homer to Cubs outfielder Seiya Suzuki, the two-run deficit felt too large for Pittsburgh to overcome. A 1-2-3 ninth inning proved that notion correct.
That is the larger problem. The Pirates need more help from everywhere on a more consistent basis. They didn’t get it Tuesday, and so they were swept in their two-game series in Chicago.
