Hurdle’s formula for success simple as 7-8-9

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by • Coverage •

DEJAN
Joakim Soria has now pitched five times for the Pirates since being acquired from the Tigers: July 31, and the 2nd, 5th, 7th and 8th of this month.

Tony Watson and Mark Melancon’s past five appearances: July 31, and the 2nd, 5th, 7th and 8th of this month.

Coincidence?

“Ha! Not a chance!” Clint Hurdle was telling me after his team’s 6-5 victory over the Dodgers Saturday night at PNC Park. “Other than the one time we needed to use Soria because Melancon was ejected, they’re going right in a row, just like that.”

Meaning 7-8-9.

Meaning the man is only beginning to realize every manager’s dream of navigating through six innings, then pressing the auto-pilot button.

“Well, it certainly makes things easier, and that’s absolutely why we went out and got Soria,” he said. “But at the same time, you’ve got to be aware that you can’t go with those three like that all the time because you’ll need to spread it out a bit.”

For example, I asked, now that this 7-8-9 sequence played out in taking the first two games of this series with the Dodgers, who might be unavailable for the sweep attempt Sunday?

“That’s what we’ll be discussing. We aren’t sure yet.”

What is sure is that the Pirates’ back-end big boys are enjoying this:

Melancon wasn’t at his sharpest, to be kind, conceding a run, two hits, a walk and a couple of seriously stung lineouts. But he ramped up that cutter to 92 mph to cap his big-league-best 35th save, the 33rd in a row. And, lest anyone fret over lost fingernails in the process, the proper context shows the run he allowed was just the third in the past 45 appearances.

Three runs, 45 appearances!

“Honestly, I’m just having fun,” Melancon said. “A game like this, a situation like this, with everybody so into it … that’s fun, man. It is.”

Soria, the newcomer, made clear he’s having fun, too, even though he went from closer in Detroit to a notch below setup man.

“I just want to win,” Soria said. “That’s why I’m here. If I take the ball in the seventh inning and we have these other great pitchers here … let’s just win.”

Watson summed up the sentiment best: “We feel like we’ve got three closers. Remember that game Mark got tossed and Soria came in? It was like nothing had changed.”

• Seriously good show by Joe Blanton, too: His three zeroes settled the game after Francisco Liriano had to be pulled following the third. He allowed two hits and a walk while fanning three.

“MVP of the night,” as Melancon called Blanton.

“Just like Kansas City,” Francisco Cervelli said, referring to when Blanton was pitching for the Royals and blanked the Pirates over three innings last month at Kauffman Stadium. “Located his fastball. Put it right where he wanted.”

“That’s why we got him,” Hurdle said.

Say what you will of management’s Vance Worley mess, but Blanton might turn out to be a find. In 13 relief appearances this season, including two with the Pirates now, he has a 2.57 ERA. Now, ERA isn’t much of a statistic for relievers, but I’ll still make an exception for long men because they’re essentially pitching mini-starts.

• Liriano could whoop it up for a bit when he sliced his first career home run inside the left foul pole, a three-run shot in the second that briefly spotted the Pirates a 4-2 lead, but it didn’t last: He was out after an exasperating, erratic three innings — four runs, seven hits, two walks — that saw him misfire on 37 of his 79 pitches.

Most ominous, about a minute before Kike Hernandez launched a two-run home run off Liriano in the third, he was visited on the mound by athletic trainer Todd Tomczyk.

It wasn’t clear afterward if the two events were related. First, Hurdle said that Liriano wasn’t lifted because of any injury. A few minutes later, Liriano confirmed he could have continued pitching but acknowledged a ‘little thing’ in his upper right chest, near the armpit.

Could he have been hurt on that mighty swing?

He laughed and replied, “No, no way.”

It should be noted that Liriano was bumped up a day in the rotation, in large part because J.A. Happ has been terrible and isn’t being trusted to pitch in St. Louis this week. It’s impossible to say how much of a role the bump-up plays, but it obviously underscores yet another reason it’s important not to downgrade a position at the trading deadline.

• Hurdle took the rare step of giving a nod to the Pirates’ longtime video coordinator, Kevin Roach, for his part in helping the team win three replay challenges.

“He had a heck of a game,” Hurdle said.

I mentioned to Roach that the manager had praised him in his postgame press conference and, after his disbelief dissolved, he fairly blushed: “You get lucky sometimes.”

• From the there-are-two-teams-out-there department, we might not see a more impressive display of raw baseball beauty than Yasiel Puig throwing out Gregory Polanco on a force play at second base in the first inning.

To boot, Polanco really didn’t do anything wrong. He had to hold up to see if Starling Marte’s ball would drop in front of Puig, which it did. If it doesn’t drop, of course, Puig is capable of gunning him down at first.

“He’s amazing,” Polanco said of Puig. “Great player.”

Moms and dads, always encourage your kids to watch the opponent, too. Those other guys are very much included in the ticket price.