PHILADELPHIA — Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle had a simple message for what his team needs to do to start making up some ground in the National League.
“We’ve got work to do,” he said after a 4-2 loss to the Phillies on Thursday dropped his team’s record to 17-18 overall. “I’ve said it from the first day.”
The Pirates began the season with a 1-4 record, then righted the ship to win 10 of the next 14 and improve to 11-9. But May brought them down again, with five consecutive losses to start the month.
They rallied to win four in a row and get back above .500, but back-to-back loss at the hands of the Phillies left their manager going back to his mantra.
“We’ve got to work on overall consistency and just keep working, working to stretch things out, working to cash in on opportunities on offense,” he said. “Just keep working and then transfer the work into a game.”
The Pirates shot themselves in the foot again on Thursday, committing two key errors in the first three innings to help the Phillies take a lead they would not relinquish. While starting pitcher Vance Worley (4.0 IP, 3 runs) certainly wasn’t at his best, putting those extra baserunners on only makes things worse.
Bad baseball is a familiar feeling in Pittsburgh, but a club that’s made it to the playoffs in each of the last two seasons after 20 years of losing baseball isn’t going to just accept mediocrity anymore.
“The overall game just needs to tighten up,” Hurdle said. “You want to make a move, get in the hunt and do some things, you’ve got to play solid baseball day in and day out, and we’ve hung around .500 for the reasons I just mentioned.”