When’s the last time you were so happy about going to work that you bounced and giggled like a 12-year-old? That was Cole Tucker on Saturday afternoon, about three hours before he made his major league debut with the Pirates.
“I’m just cheesin’ now,” Tucker said as the minicams panned up and down, trying to keep his smiling face in frame as he jounced near the dugout. “I’m here, I just took ground balls on a big league field and tonight I’m facing the San Francisco Giants. I’m stoked. If I could go back (in time) and tell second grade Cole Tucker that this is happening, he would freak out. It’s just cool to be here. This is everything you dream of.”
In the fifth inning, Tucker got his first hit — a long two-run homer that landed among the shrubbery below the batter’s eye. The crowd begged a curtain call and the star rookie obliged, tapping his heart and raising his arms wide in a sort of group hug for everyone inside PNC Park.
It all was a dramatic change from how things were less than 24 hours earlier when a horrific collision put two more Pirates out of action indefinitely. The momentum of the team’s 11-6 start was threatened by injuries and bad mojo.
Tucker’s charming, infectious joie de vivre is exactly what the Pirates and their fans needed.
“It definitely felt like we needed a pick-me-up today (after) losing two of our boys,” Tucker said. “It was sweet to go out and do that.”
Pirates shortstop Erik González (left) and outfielder Starling Marte both wound up on the injured list after this collision on Friday night at PNC Park. (Charles LeClaire / USA Today)
Erik González tracked the fly ball and bolted onto the outfield grass at 19 mph. Starling Marte sprinted in toward shallow center field at 25 mph. Their route efficiencies, however, were poor. When they collided, the injury probability was 100 percent.
That’s a Statcast version of the head-on wreck Friday night that put both players on the injured list. Manager Clint Hurdle described it another way.
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“It was a yard sale out there,” Hurdle said. “Hats and gloves everywhere.”
Bodies, too.
On Saturday morning, González was placed on the 60-day IL with a broken collarbone. That type of injury can take six to eight weeks to heal, plus another month or so before the shoulder is back to full strength. Marte is on the 10-day IL with contusions to his abdominal wall and right quad. Director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk said it’s too soon to project when either player will return, although both are expected to play again this season.
Seventeen games into the 2019 season, the Pirates have lost their entire starting outfield, a backup outfielder, their starting shortstop, a backup catcher, a backup middle infielder and their starting second baseman. Also, two pitchers have been rehabbing from Tommy John surgery since last autumn.
“We’ve been dealt a really tough hand,” pitcher Trevor Williams said, then shrugged. “Part of the game.”
The first line of defense often is the manager. As a rookie with the Kansas City Royals in 1977, Hurdle learned about crisis management by watching skipper Whitey Herzog.
“There’s times in that dugout when guys look around and say, ‘Who’s got their hands at 10 and 2 (o’clock on the steering wheel)? Where’s the north star? Who’s leading this thing?’” Hurdle said. “I had those days as a player, then I looked down there and said, ‘We’re going to be all right. Whitey’s got this. He’s done it before. He’s got the experience to navigate through this.’
“I’ve always been of the belief that, whether you’re a coach, a manager or a player, times like these are when you show up. There are times when the players make it look easy and you need to stay out of the way. There are times like this, though, when there could be some anxiety, some uneasiness. That’s when the voice of reason, somebody with experience, can be of some benefit.”
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Instead of relying on the theatrics of frequent team meetings, Hurdle instead has been a steady, relentless presence, preaching his “next man up” mantra in the dugout and during frequent one-on-one confabs in his office. The players have heard the message so often, they believe it. “Clint does a good job of setting the thermostat in the room,” first baseman Josh Bell said.
On Friday, Adam Frazier was out of the lineup due to back spasms that had flared up two days earlier. Another man down? Big deal. The Pirates got one shot against Giants ace Madison Bumgarner and made the most of it. In the first inning, Jung Ho Kang’s two-out walk was followed by four straight hits.
The Pirates were up 4-0 and cruising in the eighth inning when Yangervis Solarte hit a looper into shallow center. It was Marte’s ball, but González — who at times maybe has tried too hard to impress his new team in his first season as an everyday player — kept charging.
“I never called it. He never called it,” Marte said. “Tough play.”
Despite the win, the post-game clubhouse was quiet. Hurdle was sour about the lack of communication between Marte and González but did not take either player to task in his presser. “The last thing we’re going to do is assess blame right now,” Hurdle grumbled.
Dark times.
Lookie who’s here, yinz. pic.twitter.com/2DyNxuXsco
— Rob Biertempfel (@RobBiertempfel) April 20, 2019
Tucker went 1-for-3 on Friday night for Triple-A Indianapolis against visiting Louisville. After his first 13 games with Indy, the former first-round pick was hitting .333 with three homers and five stolen bases.
Tucker had just gotten back from a late dinner with his mother, who had traveled from Phoenix to watch him play when he got the phone call from Indy manager Brian Esposito. As he listened, Tucker’s eyes got wide.
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“Dude, don’t (mess) with me,” Tucker said.
“Espo” wasn’t messing.
The next morning, Tucker and outfielder Bryan Reynolds, who also was called up from Indy, landed at Greater Pittsburgh International Airport. “I tried to sleep for a couple of hours last night, but didn’t really have success,” Reynolds said. The Pirates sent a large, black SUV to ferry them to PNC Park.
Right away, Tucker was like a shot of adrenaline. Lots of bro hugs in the clubhouse. An energetic BP session. Loud cheers when the lineup, with Tucker in the leadoff spot, was announced.
Reynolds started in center field and got his first hit, a ground-ball single, in the fourth inning. Tucker one-upped him in the fifth by blasting a 431-foot homer. Within minutes, a storm settled in over the North Shore and the game was shut down. It went down as a rain-shortened 3-1 victory, the Pirates’ fifth in a row.
Above Tucker’s locker, somebody had tacked up an edited image of Tucker swinging a bat atop the base of the Honus Wagner statue that rests at the corner of General Robinson Street and Mazeroski Way. “That’s obviously insane. I don’t know who did that,” Tucker said with a laugh. “I’ll never forget today as long as I live. Just being welcomed and included, wearing a big league uniform and winning a baseball game. It’s the coolest day of my life.”
With Tucker’s debut over, the hard part begins: keeping it going day after day. Tucker’s personality will make that less of a challenge.
“There is a human element to it where I want to go out and excel and show everyone that they were right about me,” Tucker said. “But they’ve done a really good job of communicating with me that I am here to help. It’s not like, ‘All right, go out there and we’ll see if we like you.’ They like me. They want me to go out and do well and they think I can do that. That’s really awesome for me to have that vote of confidence from the front office, the coaching staff and my teammates.”
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The reality is, Tucker could be back in Indy before González returns from his injury. Although he’s had more than 1,800 at-bats in the minors, only 57 of them have come at the Triple-A level. Even a small slump with the Pirates will raise questions about whether Tucker needs more seasoning with Indy.
There’s also the question of Super Two status. If he spends the rest of the year with the Pirates, Tucker gains a bonus year of arbitration eligibility. After shortstop Kevin Newman returns from a finger injury, the Pirates could opt to go forward with Kang and Pablo Reyes as backup shortstop options.
“I haven’t given any thought to that and neither has anyone in the organization,” Hurdle insisted. “We tried to figure out what was best for our club right now. We’ll see how it plays out daily. That’s our mindset. Because I know there are people who say we wouldn’t have called (Tucker) up for any other reason other than the sequence of events — it hasn’t been one, it’s been multiple. We see where it can take us.”
(Top photo: Charles LeClaire / USA Today)