SAN DIEGO — As the Pirates work big chunks of their Top 30 Prospects list onto the Major League roster, manager Derek Shelton and his staff at times operate as an extension of the player-development crew. By design.
“We do have a continuous relationship with the Minor Leagues, and a lot of the teaching points are the same,” Shelton explained. “The difference is the big league game is really fast, and there’s a lot of things that happen here that, regardless of where they’re at, we can’t teach them.”
In other words, there is inevitable on-the-job training for the least experienced Pirates players. The lesson Sunday afternoon: The difference between a win and a loss can be minuscule, the gap between a contender and a rebuilding team is not the chasm it may appear to be.
Three times over the weekend, the Pirates played the Padres close, with games in the balance until the very end. The Padres came away with the series victory thanks to Trent Grisham’s walk-off homer in the 10th inning Sunday, which delivered a 4-2 decision at Petco Park.
“I feel like we played really good all series,” third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes said. “It’s just unfortunate.”
Hayes saw the Pirates and Padres diverging in that area even before Grisham’s game-winning swing on a 2-0 fastball from reliever Chris Stratton.
“I think where they got us was in the clutch moments later in the game, they worked the count better,” Hayes said. “Once they got into our bullpen, I think they did a little better job with their at-bats. Usually, in those close, tight games, it’s one hit away or a walk and a hit away. So down the stretch, I think having better at-bats would put us in a better spot.”
Said Shelton: “One moment, one play, one pitch. I think if you look at both sides of the field, we have a lot of young players on the field and they have a lot of veteran players on the field. We just got to continue to talk to the guys about those situations.”
That’s not to say Stratton’s final pitch was that “one moment.” There were at least a couple more they’d like to have back:
• Rookie right-hander Roansy Contreras continued to show why MLB Pipeline ranks him as the No. 67 prospect in baseball, reaching 98.3 mph with his fastball and holding the Padres scoreless until the fifth inning. But in that inning — Contreras’ last — he hung a changeup that Jurickson Profar pulled for a two-run homer. It was the only swing against Contreras’ changeup all game.
• With two outs in the top of the 10th inning, Hoy Park tried to score from third when Padres pitcher Luis García threw a 98.5 mph sinker in the dirt and past catcher Jorge Alfaro. The ball was thrown so hard it bounced off the backstop right to Alfaro, who scrambled back to the plate to tag out Park and end the inning. Hayes was the batter, denied a chance to be a late-inning hero two days in a row.
“We got a really crappy bounce there,” Shelton said. “In a situation like that with ‘Key’ at the plate, we’ve got to be sure there. … Alfaro made a really nice play, jumping back and blocking the plate.”
Hayes doubled home a run in the eighth inning as the Bucs scored twice in the frame to tie the game. Three players from their Top 30 Prospects list — Tucupita Marcano, Cal Mitchell and Jack Suwinski came to the plate after the game was knotted. Marcano dropped a sacrifice bunt in the 10th, but Mitchell and Suwinski were retired on two pitches apiece in the ninth.
“We played in this series,” Shelton said. “When we play games like this, we have to make sure that we execute fully. We ended up not executing a couple pitches, and we ended up losing two of three because of it. But I thought we played really well.”