Pirates Insider Podcast, Episode 7 (5/29 vs. Twins)

Bryan Reynolds hit a walkoff homer. Oneil Cruz crushed a 450-foot bomb into the Allegheny River. Oh, and Jared Jones made his first MLB start since Sept. 27, 2024.

They added up to a 6-5 Pirates win at PNC Park, but Wilber Dotel might've been the biggest big-picture story of them all. What he did out of the bullpen served as a prototype for what's possible.

Those storylines coming together the way they did showed what this team is capable of.

Host Jason Mackey breaks it all down in his daily podcast.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

And good morning, everybody. Happy Saturday. This is the Pirates Insider Podcast. I am Jason Mackey talking to you from PNC Park after a 6'5 Pirates victory. Man, that was exciting. That's the way Don Kelly started things when he sat down at his post-game press conference. I don't know what else you say. Uh Brian Reynolds, a walk-off home run. And no, I'm not going to end the podcast right there. There is plenty to say. Brian Reynolds with a no-doubt shot. That thing was impressive. It was funny to see Reynolds react to it. He knew it was gone. You knew he knew it was gone. I asked him post-game, just having a little bit of fun. You have any inclination that that thing was getting out of there? And Brennell Reynolds said, No, I thought I flew out. No, I knew it. I knew that I got every bit of it. But the fun part about this game for me was there were so many storylines to go through and so many things with bigger picture implications, right? Even Wilbur Dotel coming in and throwing three scoreless innings, I think has some applicability to the rest of the season. And when I look at the Pirates, and you know, it they've been bobbing along. They're at 30 and 28 right now. I know it hasn't been quite what anybody might want or expect or anything like that. Uh, but uh this is what this team is capable of. This is why you can't, you know, pack it in, turn on them, say it's over, formulate any sort of absolute decisions because of a lot of what we saw in this game. That's the way I would roll everything that we saw together. And I'm talking about O'Neal Cruz's 450-foot home run. I'm talking about Do Tell, obviously. I'm talking about Jared Jones, and I might have buried the lead here, but him making his 2026 Pirates debut and pitching for the first time in a long time, Reynolds walk-off, et cetera. It's why you sort of have to hang on. It's why you have to go through the frustrating times. And yeah, there's been defensive issues. There's been some slumps not hitting with runners and scoring position. There have been bullpen concerns. Uh, O'Neal Cruz has certainly had peaks and valleys this season. Brian Reynolds has had peaks and valleys this season. But when you step back and look at what this team is capable of doing, what's in there? It's pretty darn good. And it really could and should get better pretty soon. I keep waiting for this team to get hot. It sort of baffles me that they've been, you know, win two, lose two, win one, lose one, you know, maybe win three, lose. It's just, it's, it's all been fairly close. They're due a run where everything goes right. I don't know if this is going to be that. I'm not saying that. I know we kind of got on that roll uh two games into the Cub Series, and it didn't work out that way. But it it is certainly in there. It would not shock me, and it's because of what we're seeing here. Brian Reynolds tonight walks in the first inning, walks in the seventh inning, and then boom, in the ninth. Uh, it's sort of a microcosm of his season, if you think about it. We talked about him getting hot in that Cub Series. He had eight hits in the series, and Reynolds in May has just been very, very good. He's drawn walks, he has had a high on base percentage. Certainly can't ding Reynolds for that, but you need the power, and you're paying him the money for the power. And we've also seen Brian Reynolds throughout his career can really get on one and it changes in a hurry. Well, he kind of warmed up to it. He's getting a lot of doubles, he's hitting four power. The home run came, and who knows where this goes. But right now, looking at Reynolds, this kind of snuck up on me. But his OPS right now, and let me pull up the box score here. It surprised he's at 834 already. I mean, and it's climbing. If you're gonna put Reynolds at an 834 OPS and you're gonna tell me O'Neil Cruz, what he did to that baseball, oh my goodness, that thing was unfair. I was talking about that with a couple people in the clubhouse and and just some some specs on it. Um the 3-1 cutter hung. Uh he hits at 111 miles per hour, 450 feet, into the Allegheny on the fly. He's just the seventh, it's just the seventh time that's happened, ironically, by uh five different players, and two of them were playing in the game. But uh you can't throw that pitch to Cruz. Uh, but it just his power potential is so immense. He's up to 12 home runs right now this season, two more RBIs. He's driven in 35 or 37, excuse me. And I talked about this earlier in the week. I like him a little further down in the lineup and where they're at right now. You're looking at Horwitz leading off. Fine. I'd be fine with Griffin there. You can flip Horwitz and Griffin if you want one and six. You know, Lau in the two spots have been very good. Reynolds at three. When Ryan O'Hearn comes back, he probably replaces Nick Gonzalez in the cleanup spot, Cruz at five, and then you know, Griffin or Horwitz at six. I mean, that's that's a really good one through six. And if you're gonna get O'Neill Cruz back with a little bit more consistency and the bat the ball and the power potential that's there, really, really electric stuff. All right, let's talk about the pitching a little bit. Jared Jones came back. I mean, it's certainly not to downplay anything Jones did. I think there were a lot of nerves there. I don't know how there couldn't be any nerves. Um, he hadn't pitched in a long time, since what, September of 2024 in a major league game. And he admitted to it with us afterwards. He goes four and a third innings. He was obviously on a pitch count, throws 77 pitches, 53 for strikes, gives up five earned runs, seven hits, two walks, six strikeouts, two home runs. Uh it that was the way Jones put it, he said it was kind of a mixed bag of everything. And I thought that was good. I mean, we saw a lot of the electric stuff. I think he was like 101 in change velocity-wise. Uh slider looked really good. And that's it, it it at the end of the day, it's gonna play. You know Jared Jones is gonna have the stuff to get people out. I do not have any concerns about that. Does he need to be around the strike zone or a little bit finer with his control? Sure. Um, are we gonna ding him for that right now after not pitching for so long and the adrenaline that was pumping through his veins? No. So it was it was an outing. It was fine. Honestly, the the pitching storyline that I want to talk about a little bit more in this forum is the bullpen. It's the bullpen. And I asked Donnie Kelly about this afterward because that this is exactly what they're going for, and this makes sense. And I talked about the Karma Majinski decision before, and I'm gonna get into it again because it was appropriate given what Wilbur Dotell did. And the Pirates are kind of scratching and clawing in this game. You know, the start wasn't ideal, they're down 5'4 at one point. And then the bullpen's take over. Evan Sisk gets out of the inning, that was the fifth for Jones, does a good job, and then they turn things over to Wilbur Dotel and they get into the Twins bullpen. And in the middle innings, it's just kind of a stalemate. But the Pirates this season, they've been, frankly, not very good in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and even the eighth sometimes. It's been a weak spot, and no matter where you turn, they're looking for help. So they found some help in Carmen Majinski. They found some help in somebody that can take that role and accentuate it. They've also found some help in Wilbur Hotel. Like I said, three scoreless, one hit allowed, no walks, four strikeouts. I mean, he's he's pumping velocity. The secondary stuff is really, really good. I love what Wilbur Hotel has brought this team. Um, he's thrown a four-seamer through a slider 24% of the time, brought out a cutter a little bit, the changeup just a tad. Uh, but Wilbur Dotel, he's obviously not going anywhere. And his ERA is 132. And what we're seeing crystallize here is somebody who can do that, who can cover those middle innings multiple at a time, and you can also go to Carmen. I mean, two out of your five spots in the rotation, when you're going to have shortened starts, you're going to have somebody backing that up. And I like again to just circle back with Carmen. Like, I understand from an individual perspective, you set out to accomplish a goal, you put everything you had into it, you showed a lot of good things. And is is that totally fair? No. Is life totally fair? No. Is it the best thing for the team to have these options? Yes. It is. And we saw tonight. It is a carbon copy. This is why it makes sense to do that. And it doesn't have to make everybody warm and fuzzy. But the end of the day, it's what helps the pirates, and this helps the pirates. It enables them to keep it a stalemate. It enables them, Gregory Soto came in, pitched well again. They keep it there. Spencer Horwitz, who I really like him in the leadoff spot and then allowing him to go left on left. I also like that. But you put the game in a winnable position by doing that. It's even more important when you think about Jones extrapolated, when you think about Bubba Chandler extrapolated, when you think about Braxton Ashcraft extrapolating. What I'm talking about there is like you might count on traditional starts from Paul Skeens and Mitch Keller. Cool. But those other guys, either by their own doing or just the natural idea of inexplication that's in Braxton Ashcraft, you're gonna have to go shorter starts with him to keep that down. You have to get somebody to back them up and sort of piggyback. And yeah, you might look at that and say, it's an unglamorous role. I want to start, I want to begin the game. I get that. I get that. But you also, if you have those scenarios, you can put two guys in a position to succeed and you help the team get to where you want to go. The Pirates right now, by moving Karma Majinski into that spot, by promoting Wilbur Dotel and Wilbur Dotel doing what he's doing, they have sneakily addressed the biggest weakness that they had with this team. If they can clean up some of the defense, and certainly that needs to be better, we've seen. I think I cited it on this podcast yesterday over the past two weeks, they lead Major League Baseball in errors. That can't happen. Clearly, the bullpen's been an issue. It hit better with runners in scoring position, but some total, they've scored runs. Their starting pitching's been good. You rectify the bullpen. I think we have something here. It's what comes back, or you know, it's why you keep coming back to this idea that you can't give up on them. You got to hear them out. You got to see how the season evolves. We saw it at the plate with Brian Reynolds and O'Neill Cruz today and what they've been able to do. Connor Griffin's still very, very good. I left that out. DH, uh, two key hits today. But uh an intriguing ball game. Hopefully you enjoyed it. We'll have another one tomorrow. Thanks so much for checking out the Pirates Insider podcast. We're going to be here every single day talking buckos, 10 to 15 minutes, designed to be short for maybe a run, a walk, a drive into work, whatever it might be. But hope you find us on iTunes, uh, Odyssey, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure you check us out every day. Thanks so much and talk to you tomorrow.