The veteran leader explained to a young Pirates team why calls won’t go their way.
The Pittsburgh Pirates’ rough 2025 season hasn’t come with much good luck, not to mention a lack of production on the field. Down 3-2 in the top of the eighth inning against the San Diego Padres on Friday night, a called third strike against Henry Davis in a 3-2 count with two outs and the bases loaded that was low and would’ve been ball four if the ABS (Automatic Ball-Strike System) was intact, cost the Pirates the game.
Davis showed his displeasure, and Manager Don Kelly came out to defend his player right away and was tossed from the game, which has been a theme in his short tenure thus far as the Pirates’ skipper. Pirates starter Mitch Keller, who added another quality start going six innings and allowing only three runs, was shown in the dugout tunnel in street clothes, furious with the call. That potential run would’ve put Keller off the hook for the loss, but instead his record is an ugly 1-7 despite a 3.77 ERA and a 1.22 WHIP, mainly because he has the least run support on average in Major League Baseball.
Most notably, Andrew McCutchen stared down Emil Jimenez, the home plate umpire, for an entire half inning after the call. McCutchen, along with hitting coach Matt Hague, expressed their displeasure with Crew Chief Andy Fletcher immediately after the game was over as he walked off the field.
McCutchen showed leadership after the game as well, as Don Kelly told reporters that he had spoken to the clubhouse and said that the team needed to “earn that respect.” McCutchen further elaborated on what he meant to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Noah Hiles.
“It means calls like that will go for us, not against us,” McCutchen said. “We have to earn it. We have to earn it to get those calls. The way you earn it is by going out, playing good baseball and winning games. If you don’t do that, that’s the type of thing that’s gonna happen. It goes around when you’re a rookie in spring training, never been in the big leagues and you’re wearing Number 95. The umpire, in the seventh inning, if it’s not close, he’s probably going to call it a strike because you’re Number 95. “Essentially that’s the same thing when it comes to us right now and the way that we’re playing. Right now, it’s, ‘Eh, we’re on the road, we’re playing against the Padres, it’s in San Diego, it’s a crucial part of the game.’ The call goes against us right now. If we want that to go for us, we gotta go out and earn it. We gotta go do our jobs and gotta win ball games as much as we can. Obviously we’ve been playing better baseball, but we’ve been on the short end of it.”
In essence, what McCutchen is saying is that bad teams don’t get the fortune of good calls. But if they continue to play better baseball under Donnie Kelly, maybe some luck will eventually come their way.