PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – After having one of the lowest team ERAs the first week plus of Spring Training, a third straight struggle for Pirates pitching. The Orioles beat the Pirates 11-2 Monday afternoon in Sarasota.
That makes 24 runs allowed in the last three games.
Pirates top pitching prospect Quinn Priester made his Spring Training debut. The -6'3" righty gave up a run and a walk over two-thirds of the fifth inning.
"Definitely good to get the first one out of the way," Priester said. "Certainly not what I was looking to do. It's all a learning process. Need to learn from it and go on from there."
Priester said he was behind in too many counts, needs to get ahead and attack hitters. There were some positives Tuesday afternoon.
"Able to get some outs with the fastball, even when behind in counts which is big for me," Priester said. "Just building off of that, calming everything down to be able to land the off-speeds will make the fastball better. It will minimize walks. That's where it starts, minimizing walks."
Normally pitchers head to the clubhouse right after they are done, but Priester soaked it all in with his teammates in the dugout. The 20-year-old has been watching and learning.
"Mentality, a lot how they think about their pitches and how they go about executing them," Priester said. "Where they look. Where they set their sights. Do they throw it through the catchers shoulder or throw it through the helmet or maybe they think about pulling their arm a certain way. Those things mentality wise make things more consistent and easy for me. I need to be able to make the adjustments faster."
"I want to be much, much better because of how today went. If I want to achieve the goals that I've set for myself and for the team. I need to execute better. It's really good to be in an environment like this that is very game-like."
Anderson goes 4
Free agent lefty starter Tyler Anderson went four innings with mixed results. He gave up a couple of homers, but also struck out seven.
"Overall I thought it was better than even it looked," Anderson said. "My goal is to get ahead, a couple of times I fell behind on both of those homers. I worked myself into bad counts. It got better as it went on."
"I think at first I came out and I was still in that Spring Training, feeling it out (mode). Feeling your delivery, more feeling than competing. Those last couple of innings it was more of like 'let's just start to throwing the ball and competing'."
Anderson has allowed 17 hits (four homers) in 9 innings with 8 earned runs, no walks and 12 strikeouts this spring.
Ke Homer
Ke'Bryan Hayes hit his first homer of the spring, also had a RBI single. Hayes is hitting .417 through his first eight Grapefruit League games.
Adam Frazier and Gregory Polanco tripled in Monday's game.
Up Next
Pirates are in Fort Myers at 1:05p on Tuesday with Chad Kuhl against Twins righty Jose Berrios.
