All right, good morning, Pirates fans. This is the Pirates Insider Podcast. I am Jason Mackey talking to you from PNC Park. And I'd be lying if I said it was an optimistic, well, maybe not optimistic, but it was not an upbeat clubhouse post-game, nor did I expect it to be. The Pirates lost 11-9 to the Philadelphia Phillies here in 10 innings, and it was a gut punch. You certainly have games like this over the course of the season, and it's not to sweep them under the rug. That's not what we're going for here, but it's just an acknowledgement that they do happen. That you have a long season and they're not all going to be great. And this was not. It exposed some things that the Pirates are plenty aware of. They know they need to fix. The bullpen has not been good enough. In May, that group has a 5.90 ERA, and we felt every bit of it. A couple weeks ago, or even in April, we were talking about Gregory Soto and Dennis Santana, this two-headed monster at the back of the bullpen. They're able to kind of be interchangeable in save situations. Well, it was not that way in this one. Gregory Soto came on. Pirates had an opportunity ahead 8-5. Looked like they were maybe going to close this thing out. Gregory Soto not able to do it. He encounters some trouble. And let's also acknowledge this is a good Phillies team. Again, not making excuses, just being realistic. This is a good team. And that came into play. Kyle Schwarber homered twice in this game, and the Phillies aren't going to go quietly. But you're in a situation like the Pirates are, and you have the talent that they do in the back end of the bullpen, and you have to close these games out. It's also frustrating if you're sitting here looking at this Pirates season. They're now 24 and 21, but they've got a top five offense. They've scored 229 runs. That's fourth in Major League Baseball. Their starting rotation has a 3.50 ERA. That's sixth best in Major League Baseball. By and large, tonight, Braxton Ashcraft had a pretty good start. We talked to him afterward. He bemoaned two pitches. One was a fastball he left down the middle to Justin Crawford to open the seventh inning. I understand it. It wasn't a good pitch. The other was a fastball he left down the middle to Kyle Schwarber in the fifth inning. Schwarber hit it out. I understand it wasn't a good pitch. But he did more than enough to win the game. He pitched into the seventh inning, again, gave up four earned runs, struck out five. He didn't walk anybody. Braxton Ashcraft was competitive. By and large, Pirates starters have given them competitive starts. But any game where you lead 6-0 in 8-3, which the Pirates did, you have to be able to win those games. If you look at their number of blown saves, I believe they're third in Major League Baseball right now. They've lost seven times this season when scoring at least six runs. Again, if you remember the starting rotation, what I said, 3.50 ERA, sixth best in Major League Baseball, and you're putting up those kind of numbers, that's not going to work. And it's not just Kyle Schwarber. And you can't just say, oh, Mason Montgomery's been really good. He hasn't allowed a run in 12 stars. I get all of that. I get all of that. But the group, again, let's step back here. I found myself doing this in the press box. If you look at the composition of this bullpen, what we were told over the winter in spring training, how this group looked, you had five guys that you were going to be expecting to handle the bulk of your leverage situations. Gregory Soto, Dennis Santana, Isaac Matson, Justin Lawrence, Mason Montgomery. Johan Ramirez, kind of a utility piece. He can be a fireman. He can be a multi-inning guy. Appreciate his versatility. You fill in the other two spots with at the beginning of the season, it was Jose Architi and Hunter Barco. That didn't work out. One of them's been kind of a rotating spot. Wilbur Dotell was here for a little bit. Cam Sanders, that didn't work out. I want to see Dotell again, by the way. Brandon Badois pitched in this one. He didn't pitch in this one, pitched uh recently, but he's been up here. In any case, I'm looking at the top five. And Soto, Santana, Isaac Matson, Lawrence, and Mason Montgomery. Mason Montgomery, by and large, has exceeded expectations or pitched according to them. Soto outside of tonight was pretty good. But Justin Lawrence has kind of been, you know, your low leverage, lopsided game guy. Dennis Santana has not looked the way he has the past two years, and neither really has Isaac Madsen. And it's kind of catching up with the Pirates. And they need to figure this one out. Right now, if you look at their bullpen, the only guy that's really exceeded expectations is Evan Sisk. And nothing wrong with Evan Sisk, not criticizing him. He's actually become a pretty integral part of their bullpen. If that's the only guy exceeding expectations, that's a problem. So the Phillies, they got a 9-8 lead in the 10th. Brandon Marsh did it. Raphael Marchand, he followed two batters later. He bumped the lead to 11-8. The Pirates were able to get one run back, but it wasn't enough. And it was a shame, too, because this was actually a pretty good game for the Pirates. I talked about the offense. If we want to focus on something positive just for a little bit, Brandon Lau continues to hit. Started his game with a really good diving play on Brandon Marsh. Ends up homering twice. Lau now has 12 home runs on the season, 31 RBIs. He's been everything the Pirates could have possibly asked for. The Pirates actually had five guys with multiple hits. O'Neil Cruz, Lau, Brian Reynolds, Spencer Horwitz. Excuse me, uh Triolos was an error. He had one hit. But either way, a productive game, you have a six-run inning. That should add up to a win. One of the plays people are circling, and I understand why. Connor Griffin's error to open the ninth inning. Now, Brandon Lau talked after this one, and you know, he said, I don't know too many shortstops who don't make any errors, and I get that. And by and large, Connor Griffin, for what he is, has been very good defensively. It came at a bad time. It's a physical error. He makes one. I don't like it. I'm not going to fixate on it. The guys with a track record of pitching at the back end of games, you know, when you go into a season and build a bullpen and expect these guys to perform, they simply haven't performed up to their capabilities. They haven't been consistent enough. That's the problem here. The starting pitching, and again, we're zooming out a little bit. The starting pitching with the Pirates has been more than good enough. Paul Skeens, Mitch Keller, what Braxton Ashcraft has done, great. I give Carmen Majinski a lot of credit for how he's battled and proven that he's probably capable of being a starter. That's a separate discussion. I feel like I have this every time on the podcast, but I'd probably move Carmen Majinski to the bullpen at this point. It's kind of a raw deal for Carmen, but at the same time, what do the Pirates need? They need a reliever. They need somebody who's capable of eating innings and pitching in the back end of games. Carmen can do both. He helps this team. You bring Jared Jones back as a starter, you instantly get relief help. They're doing basically everything you would want them to do. The defense could be a little bit better, I understand. Certainly in the outfield, it hasn't been up the snuff. I do think it's only going to go so far in terms of being good. If it can just be average, that would be fine. They're scoring a lot of runs. They're scoring more than enough runs. The bullpen needs to fix itself fast. And that's the headline of my story at insidepirates.com. The pirates must fix their bullpen woes fast as they prove costly against the Phillies. So what happens? It's easy to say, right? It's easy to say that you have to fix your bullpen woes. I asked Don Kelly what this group needs to do to pitch better, and he seemed to hint that they're pressing a little bit. And I I get that. I mean, it's it's been more of a conversation topic recently. So there's some measure of just having to dial it back, get these guys to relax a little bit, which again is much easier said than done. You can maybe go down in the minors and get some help. But right now where the pirates are at, this is trending toward a situation where they simply might have to go out and get somebody. You might have to go give up something to get an arm. They need more assurance than they have currently in the later innings. If you're scoring runs, if you're getting starting pitching, if you're doing everything else right, you simply can't afford to lose these games. They're too important, they're too costly, and tonight just stunk. It was a frustrating one because they should have won the game. They did everything they could to win it, except handle the relief innings. Another storyline, this is actually in the minor leagues, but it's important for Pirates fans nonetheless. Seth Hernandez, their top prospect now that Connor Griffin has graduated from prospect status into being a regular. He debuted with Hay A Greensboro and he put up basically the same numbers that he's been putting up in Bradenton. He was really, really good. I'm not sure there's any shock there. He didn't allow a run or a hit over five innings at Jersey Shore. He walked four and struck out seven. He threw 70 pitches, 41 for strikes. And as has become the norm for Mr. Hernandez, he racked up 18 whiffs. Very impressive in eight or seven minor league starts this season. Excuse me, Hernandez has an 00.82 ERA that's across 33 innings. He's walked 11 and he struck out 57. So if we're looking for little kernels of good news, Brandon Lau was really good. Marcelo Zuna hit a home run in the bullpen that Johan Ramirez cut with a cone. I know a lot of us for a while were thinking of ways to write stories that encapsulated a reliever catching a home run with a cone. That was fun. Obviously, that was blown to smithereens by the way the defense or the way the bullpen handled the end of the game. So if you get the bullpen woes fixed, they're doing a lot else good. They'll have an opportunity to do that tomorrow. Bubba Chandler on the hill in the middle game of this three game series, and then Paul Skeens and Zach Wheeler for the finale on Sunday. I'll have a conversation with Paul Skeens on Bucko Talk tomorrow morning on 93 7 The Fan from 9 to 11. You want to listen to that. And we'll talk to you tomorrow night from PNC Park. Thanks, everyone.