José Alvarado’s pitching struggles continue as Pirates walk-off Phillies

PITTSBURGH — José Alvarado has had a tough month. He now has an 11.81 ERA over six appearances in July. He was tasked with a difficult assignment on Friday — holding on to a one-run lead against the top of the Pirates’ lineup — and he did not deliver.

Alvarado allowed a single and a walk to put runners on first and second. Pinch runner Michael Taylor stole third base, and Alvarado struck out Bryan Reynolds for the first out of the inning. But Oneil Cruz reached out a fielders’ choice to score Taylor to tie the game, and Andrew McCutchen scored on a Nick Gonzales walk-off single to secure an 8-7 win for the Pirates.

“It looks like the stuff is there, the velocity is there, the shapes are there,” manager Rob Thomson said, “it’s just, he’s not getting much swing and miss, so he must be missing over the plate. But I’ve seen a lot of guys go through this during the course of the year, and they fight out of it. And he will.”

“I feel good,” Alvarado said of his recent outings. “[The fact] that things aren’t going my way is another thing.”

He added: “That’s baseball. It’s hard when you come into bigger moments and you lose the game. That’s hard. But that’s the game.”

Thomson said he would consider putting Alvarado in lower-leverage situations “if that’s what needs to be done.” He was encouraged by the fact that Alvarado kept the ball in the strike zone on Friday, as opposed to his July 13 outing, when he threw only 11 strikes out of 27 pitches. But he’s going to need to induce more whiffs, and it’s not clear why he’s having trouble doing that.

By the end of the night, the Phillies had blown not one, but two separate three-run leads. They got off to a strong start, scoring three runs in the first, but the Pirates responded immediately with a three-run inning of their own.

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Starter Aaron Nola was allowing hard contact, but he also didn’t have great support behind him. Two balls were hit to Cristian Pache in center field. The sun was shining bright in the outfield, but the infield was covered by a shadow, which could have obstructed Pache’s view.

He failed to properly track a line drive single hit by Reynolds, or the hard-hit RBI double Cruz launched over Pache’s head during the next at-bat. It extended the inning longer than it should have. Nola needed 21 pitches to get through first, allowing three runs.

The right-handed starter grinded through his next four innings. He worked out of a jam in the second, and allowed a sacrifice fly in the third, but didn’t allow another run from that point on. He finished his day at 80 pitches, allowing four earned runs on six hits with one walk and four strikeouts in five innings.

“Early in the game, he looked a little bit rusty, seven days off between starts,” Thomson said of his decision to pull Nola early. “A lot of stressful pitches early. Again, [he had] seven days off between starts, so going into the game, we were thinking kind of a 90-95 pitch limit, just to back him off a little bit. Because he’s going to be going on regular rest the next time. And I thought that he did the job and I felt like we were in a pretty good spot.”

The Phillies lineup had a better night, albeit with some missed opportunities. They combined for seven runs on 13 hits, but left 11 men on base and went 3-for-11 with runners in scoring position.

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Weston Wilson hit his first big league home run of the year in the top of the third, and Trea Turner hit a two-run home run in the fourth to almost the exact same spot. Wilson went 3-for-5 with two RBIs and Turner went 1-for-4 with two RBIs, one walk, and one strikeout. Alec Bohm, Nick Castellanos, and Edmundo Sosa all had multi-hit nights.

The Phillies had a three-run lead entering the bottom of the fifth but the bullpen was unable to hold on to it. Gregory Soto entered in the sixth, and got two outs quickly — thanks, in part, to a stellar catch from Castellanos to rob Ke’Bryan Hayes of a base hit — but struggled to put away his final hitter. He allowed back-to-back singles to Joshua Palacios and Joey Bart to put runners on first and third, but induced a soft groundout to end the inning.

Orion Kerkering had a rough outing in the seventh. He allowed three hits — including an RBI single — to start his outing, struck out Gonzales, and induced a sacrifice fly double play on a ball hit to Wilson. Wilson threw it to Sosa at second base, who tagged Cruz. Initially Cruz was called safe, but the call was reviewed and overturned to end the inning. A run still scored on the sacrifice fly, cutting the Phillies’ lead from 7-4 to 7-6.

According to NBC Sports Philadelphia, Friday marked the first time Kerkering had allowed multiple runs in an outing in the big leagues.

“Not much swing and miss, tonight,” Thomson said of Kerkering. “So, again, four days off, might be a little rusty. The velocity was down just a tick. But again, you’ve got to get back after it.”

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Jeff Hoffman, coming off of the first All Star game of his career, struck out the side in the eighth. The Phillies led the ninth with back-to-back singles but failed to add any insurance runs. Alvarado was charged with Friday’s loss. He said he has a short memory.

“It’s not about how we start, it’s about how we finish it,” Alvarado said.

Catcher Garrett Stubbs was hit by a pitch on the hand in the first inning. He seemed to be in a lot of pain, but was checked out by assistant athletic trainer Joe Rauch, and stayed in the game.

“We’ll check him tomorrow,” Thomson said. “It started to bruise up a little bit at the end, a little bit of swelling.”