Series Preview: Cleveland Indians hope to beat up on woeful Pirates

The Cleveland Indians are riding high as they head to Pittsburgh to face off with the Pirates riding a three-game winning streak.

After a series sweep of the Detroit Tigers, the Cleveland Indians will travel to Steel City to take on the woeful 4-14 Pittsburgh Pirates.

Both Cleveland and Pittsburgh rank near the bottom of the league in terms of batting average. The Pirates are hitting .211 as a team while the Indians are hitting a league-worst .203. However, the Cleveland bats have been heating up of late.

The Indians erupted for 21 runs over the weekend, culminating with a five home run outburst in Detroit Sunday.

Cleveland now will look to continue their offensive surge against the Pirates who have had their past two games postponed due to the Cincinnati Reds COVID tests results while the team was scheduled to finish a four-game set in the Queen City.

The Indians find themselves in second place in the AL Central standings and just a game and a half behind the Minnesota Twins for first place. While the Indians pitching has cooled slightly, the offense has heated up with the power of Franmil Reyes leading the way.

Reyes is the Indians team leader in hits (24), average (.316), home runs (tied with Jose Ramirez), slugging (.553), and OPS (.918). He capped off a stellar week with two home runs on Sunday. However, it will be important to watch if Terry Francona holds him out of any games this week, as he was hit in the hand during his last at-bat on Sunday.

X-rays returned negative, but it wouldn’t be a surprise for the Indians to give him additional time off if needed.

On the other hand, the Pirates have been struggling across the board and find themselves with the worst record in baseball.

After trading away star outfielder Starling Marte this past offseason, the Pirates are using 2020 as a rebuild with a new general manager in Ben Cherington and manager in Derek Shelton both in their first years with the team.

Part of their early struggles have come at the plate. Their offense relies on former All-Star Josh Bell, who has cooled off considerably since mid-2019 when he was in batting title contention. This year, he’s hitting just .203 and leading the Pirates with 24 strikeouts.

One name to keep an eye for Pittsburgh is second baseman Colin Moran who has six home runs, and leads the Pirates in runs, slugging and OPS.

Now, here’s a game-by-game preview and a look at the pitching matchups for this week’s series in Pittsburgh.

Tuesday Aug. 18, 7:05 p.m. EST

Probable Starters: Carlos Carrasco (2-2, 3.22 ERA) vs JT Brubaker (0-0, 3.38 ERA)

Carlos Carrasco will make his first career start against the Pirates Tuesday to open the three-game set.

The only current Pirate to have faced Carrasco is former Royal Jarrod Dyson, whose hitting .211 lifetime against the Cleveland right-hander.

In his last start, Carrasco struggled as he tossed just 4.1 innings against the Cubs and had trouble staying in the strike zone as he walked five Cubs in a losing effort. Prior to the rough day against the Cubs, he had worked at least six innings in each of his starts this season.

One concern for Carrasco heading into Tuesday’s game are his struggles away from Progressive Field.

In 2019 his road ERA was a woeful 6.23, while he pitched to a 4.39 ERA at home. This year has started with a similar trend as has a 4.50 road ERA and a 2.76 at home.

On the positive side, Carrasco should benefit from the return of starting catcher Roberto Perez. Perez is expected to make his return on Tuesday, following a stint on the injured list and the demotion of outfielder Oscar Mercado to the alternate site.

Pittsburgh will send JT Brubaker to the mound for just his second big league start and first against the Indians.

No current Cleveland hitters have faced him in the majors. However, he’s spent part of the last past seasons with the Pirates Triple-A affiliate in Indianapolis, where he’s faced several current Indians while they were in Columbus.

With an inexperienced pitcher on the mound, this should be a golden opportunity for the Indians to tax the Pirates bullpen early in this series.

Brubaker has been susceptible to right-handed batters who are hitting .364 against him this season. This should benefit the few right-handed specialists in the Indians lineup like Reyes and Perez.

Thursday Aug. 20, 7:05 p.m. EST

Probable Starters: Shane Bieber (4-0, 1.30 ERA) vs Trevor Williams (1-3, 3.98 ERA)

Game three will feature the sixth start of the year for Cleveland ace Shane Bieber.

The numbers for Bieber so far this season are borderline insane. He currently leads is tied for the MLB lead with four wins and leads the game in both Strikeouts (54), and innings pitched (34.2).

Thursday, he’ll be handed the gift of facing the second-worst hitting team in MLB in the Pirates.

One thing the Pirates do well, is they have limiting strikeouts as an offense. However, beyond that, they are bottom feeders across MLB. What’s even better for Bieber is no current Pirate has faced him at the big league level.

Thus, expect Bieber to continue to improve his chances at a 2020 Cy Young Award.

On the flip side, the well-known Trevor Williams will take the ball for the Pirates. His win, loss ratio isn’t impressive, but he has put Pittsburgh in positions to win his games. His last start was against the Twins when he went seven strong innings, allowed one run, and struck out seven against one of baseball’s best lineups.

He made some adjustments towards the end of 2019 and had a nine start stretch where his ERA was 0.66. Williams is one of the Pirates’ trade pieces, should they look to add more prospects to their organization.

This is surely the best pitching matchup of the series on paper. The Pirates will be counting on Williams to have a quality start after what could be two semi-bullpen games to open the series.

The Indians won’t need many runs to support Bieber, but runs against Williams could be challenging to score if Williams is able to settle in to a groove.

Williams is historically a better home performer than road and this year lefties are hitting just .200 against him, which is not ideal for Cleveland.

The Indians had a similar dilemma against Cubs right-hander Kyle Hendricks who dominates lefties and still ran a mostly left-handed lineup and paid the price for it. Thus, it will be interesting to see if Francona plugs in any right-handed bench bats for a spot start.