Pirates Insider Podcast, Episode 37 (7/7 vs. Braves)

Ryan O'Hearn had himself a day. Not only that, it came after unfortunate news for Konnor Griffin, and it helped Paul Skenes get his first win since May 12. It turned around a dour day for the Pirates, furthering O'Hearn's strong leadership. Jason Mackey takes a closer look at O'Hearn's huge game, as well as what went right for Paul Skenes.

Transcript

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Good morning, Pirates fans, and welcome into the Pirates Insider Podcast. I am Jason Mackey, coming to you from PNC Park after one of the better Pirates victories of the season, 12-4 over the Atlanta Braves, otherwise known as the Ryan O'Hearn game. My goodness, I don't know what Ryan O'Hearn had for breakfast, but I would like it tomorrow. Three home runs, ten RBIs. That's a franchise record, by the way, the first time O'Hearn has ever hit three home runs in a game at any level, he said. Absolutely crazy. Oh, by the way, Paul Skeens won his first game since May 12th, sort of stamped out some of those concerns. Skeens goes six innings, gives up two earned runs, eight hits, a walk, four strikeouts. A lot of things went right for the Pirates. I don't really know where to start with this one, but I think I'm gonna start big picture. And because this has just been an absolute nutso day at PNC Park, we walk in and we found find out Connor Griffin is gonna miss eight to ten weeks. He's on the I. L with a torn sagittal band in his left ring finger. Uh that happened in Sunday's game, diving play for Griffin in some unfortunate injury news. And everybody's down, right? I mean, it feels like the sky is falling. You're losing Connor Griffin. He just got back off the I. L. The Pirates are facing such a pivotal stretch here. They're in the middle of 22 straight against teams 500 or better. The Atlanta Braves are really good. The Milwaukee Brewers are really good. Things have been tough with Paul Skeens. And what do you know? Well, Ryan O'Hearn goes berserk. And it turns into just a fun game, a laugher. You've got a position player for Atlanta pitching. And here we are at the end of the night talking about, you know, kind of what we've been talking about all season. There's been some really good leadership installed in this clubhouse. I talked Monday about what O'Hearn and Brandon Lau have brought. And this was a day that just could have gone sideways. It could have been miserable. And it was the exact opposite. We could look at the specific at bats for O'Hearn, and we will a little bit. But just it one of those games. One of those games, tough to explain. He hits his hundredth home run of his career. And it nets him the 10th, the 8th, 9th, and 10th RBIs of the game. Just absolutely incredible. There's so many numbers and stats and weird quirky baseball things to run through. But he's just, he's the 11th player since the RBI became an official stat in 1920 to have 10 RBIs and three home runs in a game. The last was Shohei Otani, who did it September 19th at Miami. That's just one of them. One of my favorites. He and Brandon Lau now have over 60 RBIs. The last time the Pirates had two players before the All-Star break with 60 plus RBIs, 1990. That was when Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla did it. They had 62 and 61 respectively. And oh, by the way, Brian Reynolds has 56 RBIs. It's a further testament to how darn good this offense has been. This is the 25th time and by a 16th different player to have three home runs in a game as a pirate. Other pirates to Homer three times in the first six innings of a game. Leover Pagero did it last year, last August. Kutch did it in 09 and 2016. Again, they're just we we we could pick apart. Most RBIs in a game this season. There's literally an email in my inbox from Pirates PR, which, like, God bless them, love Luke and Adam and Danny and these people digging up great stats to explain this game. And I'm I'm interested by it. Certainly. I'm not throwing water on any of it. But I want to take a step back and just try to remember what this day felt like when we walked into the clubhouse early this afternoon and find out about Connor Griffin. Obviously, some dour news. You know, what's going to happen? Is Jared Triolo going to be okay? What's this mean for the trickle down? Is this, you know, where things start to go wrong for the Pirates? And, you know, kind of everybody's been conditioned to expect the world. Well, Ryan O'Hearn all season has kind of bristled at the idea that why because something was some way before. Why does it have to be that way again? And I actually love that about him. He's really pushed back on this narrative a lot, and he pushed back on it in a big way in this game. Why? Because things, you know, have always seemingly the sky is falling. Why does the sky have to fall again? It doesn't. And so Ryan O'Hearn, anyway, the Pirates are chasing a 1-0 deficit. We're in the bottom of the first inning. Mauricio Dubon singled in the first. But Ryan O'Hearn comes up to up to the plate, base is loaded, gets a 1-1 curveball over the middle of the plate, 384 to right center, 99.6 off the bat, boom, grand slam. And at that point, being in the ballpark, I felt like it really changed. People were able to breathe a little bit. There was something to be happy about, and it just kind of built from there. Top of the third, Ozzie Albee singles up the middle off Paul Skeens. It wasn't on a bad pitch at all. Not going to fault Paul. One-two changeup, down and away, hits at 67.4 miles per hour. Like whatever. Not going to get upset about that. The big home run for O'Hearn for me is a three-run shot in the bottom of the third. 2-0 slider, down and away. Really good piece of hitting by O'Hearn. I think it shows the kind of hitter he is. Takes it 4.15 to center field, 105.1 off the bat. And at that point, it was on. At that point, he's just feeling it. Ryan O'Hearn is having one of those days. And, you know, it wasn't just O'Hearn either. I know I'm focusing on him, but Brandon Lau with three hits and RBI, two runs scored. He had a solid game. Nick Gonzalez continues to hit two more hits for him in a Ribby. Tyler Callahan even gets two hits. Just top to bottom, another solid day from the offense. And of course it mattered because we what of what we saw out of Paul Skeens. Of course, 12 runs are going to matter a lot, but happy for Paul Skeens to end this streak. And so let's talk about that a little bit now that we're on the other side of it. And I think you're only human if it wears on you a little bit. But I don't think Paul looked at this like, I need, you know, personal gratification. I need a win. I need this. I need that. Like it's more just wanting to come through for the team. It's more wanting to win games in which he's pitching. Perfectly natural feeling, right? I also think for Paul, there was kind of meat on the bone with how he could pitch. You know, it it wasn't so much even the result as it was the process. And he's smart, puts a lot into this, and knows that he can pitch better than he's pitched. Well, wouldn't you know it kind of got back to the Paul Schings of old? And this got underplayed, I think, a little bit in our discussion over Paul Skeens because they had dropped nine straight skein starts, but this was the Paul Skees of old. Now he didn't come out with a hundred mile an hour fastball, and I've said it on this podcast before, I don't particularly care. I'll take 97 in with intent. I'll take 97 with location. That works. For the season, Skeins has thrown his force seam fastball 38% of the time. On Tuesday, he threw it 51% of the time. The splinker, we've talked about that. Kind of an underutilized weapon. On the season, he's thrown it 11% of the time. Tonight he threw it 18% of the time. So more four-seamers, more splinkers, and more attacking in the zone. Thought that was notable. Skeens threw 95 pitches in six innings, 66 for strikes. He was filling up the zone and he was wasn't terribly efficient early, got better as the game went on, uh, but did what he had to do to get outs and to give a quality start. That was his ninth quality start of the season. He picked up 12 whiffs. But I thought this was a very big building block for Paul Skeens. And not that, you know, he's not somebody that needs to do some sort of total rehab and come back and remind us that he can pitch and all that nonsense. We know that he can pitch. We know what Paul Skins is made of. And I, you know, and I know I I bristled again, I have to keep referencing things that I've said on this podcast. He's not hurt. He's not hurt. I think we can see that. He's not hurt. Was he pitching, you know, to his ability level? No. Um could some things be tweaked in his pitch mix? Sure. And I think we saw that. Uh I love the way Paul Skins pitched. I love the way he attacked. I thought it was a very good positive step in the right direction, however you want to frame it. Karma Majinski follows him, goes two scoreless, doesn't give up a hit, a run, or a walk, and strikes out two. Hunter Stratton comes in and pitches the last inning. I'm not going to read too much into that. The game was lopsided by that point. You want to get Stratton first game in in a Pirates uniform. Maybe there were some nerves, whatever. But the big story of this one, of course, Ryan O'Hearn, what he did, um, and just you know continuing to be such a big thing for this team, for this offense, whatever. He's now hitting 293 with an 851 OPS. Yes, he has an 851 OPS. Just going up and down the Pirates lineup right now, it's crazy. You're going Brandon Lau with an 820 OPS in the number two hole. Brian Reynolds 870. As Marilyn Valdez did pick up a hit, has a 1.022 OPS. O'Hearn at 851, Tyler Callahan at 828. Um, they their scoring runs. And I know this, you know, to loop back to Griffin in our original point, like clearly you want Connor Griffin in the lineup, right? Plus defense at shortstop. He was just getting to some power, runs to bases, stole his 20th base of the season Sunday in Washington. A hundred times out of a hundred, you want Connor Griffin playing shortstop for you. Not saying anything other than that. However, if the Pirates are insulated to withstand an injury, it might be this. They're actually built in a way that they can cover for it. I don't think Jared Triolo is a gigantic drop-off defensively. Obviously, there's going to be a bit of a drop-off with the bat. He's hitting 240, a 628 OPS. He has been better lately, but he's not Connor Griffin. That's fine. But when you bring back Spencer Horowitz, when you bring back O'Neill Cruz, which they will do after the all-star break, it's still a net positive. You're still going to be in a very good direction. And right now, the Pirates, they're scoring a ton of runs. Let's go to the season count in where they stand. But I mean, this is just it's so darn impressive. It led to more questions post-game, you know, asking Don Kelly, would you ever think about that that you guys would make this sort of turnaround? Right now the Pirates are at 487 runs. That's third most in Major League Baseball behind the Nationals and the Dodgers. They've hit 117 home runs. Can you believe that? 117 home runs. How many did they hit last year? 117 home runs. They matched last year's home run total. It's July 7th. O'Hearn's been a part, Lau's been a part, Reynolds has been a part. All of it works together. Cruz, Horwitz, they've played parts. As Marilyn Valdez coming up and contributing something, that has helped. The Pirates offense was able to flex its muscles tonight. And I think this is something, you know, this is what leaders do. And this is when you talk about the identity of a team. When backs are up against the wall, you get some crap news with Connor Griffin. How's this going to go? Everybody's kind of down. Wait a second. Wait a second. We've got the veteran guy who's been through a lot of stuff in his career. I know that Ryan O'Hearn didn't, you know, go out and explicitly say, or he wasn't sitting there telling himself, man, I got to do this for because Connor Griffin's out. I got to do this because Paul Skins hasn't won a game. Just kind of quietly has a very professional game, couple of at-bats, gets the results. They've been due. He's hitting more home runs, by the way. I love that for Ryan O'Hearn personally. He's already up to 16 home runs. Um, and last season, I believe, was his high water mark as a pro 17. He's one away from his career high, really getting to a lot of power. I think it shows, too, why the Pirates added him in this ballpark. It's absolutely fantastic. But anyway, Pirates 12-4 winners over the Atlanta Braves. They've got a leg up in the series. Jared Jones on the mound tomorrow. I'll be back at PNC talking to you about this victory from here. Make sure you like and subscribe and download and do whatever you have to do to check out these daily Pirates Insider podcasts. Uh, very privileged to bring them to you every day. And I'm Jason Mackey, another edition tomorrow. Thanks, everybody.