PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Pirates wrapped up another 100-loss season with a 62nd win beating the Cardinals 5-3 Wednesday afternoon at PNC Park.
“It’s good,” said Pirates Manager Derek Shelton. “We played well. We played well this entire series. Really proud of how our guys finished.”
Bucs outfielder/first-baseman Miguel Andujar tripled as one of three hits, infielder Diego Castillo doubled twice and drove in a run. Ji Hwan Bae singled, scored a run and drove in a run. Manny Banuelos got the win going 1.2 innings of scoreless relief and Yohan Ramirez got his first save.
6’5” righty Johan Oviedo made his seventh start with the Pirates giving up a pair of earned runs over four innings. Oviedo struck out one with no walks.
“This is a big, strong kid that has the ingredients to make a good starting pitcher in the major leagues,” Shelton said. “Ability to execute the fastball, the velocity, the way the breaking stuff has started to play. I think we’ve identified some things with his pitches that we’ve worked on since we got him. To acquire a guy like this, is a really good situation.”
The 24-year-old started the season as a reliever for St. Louis and his thrilled to be a starter again with the Pirates. He was a part of the Jose Quintana, Chris Stratton trade to the Cardinals.
“Amazing, it’s been really good,” Oviedo said. “All of the work we’ve put in together, really excited. I’m really glad that I’m here with the opportunity to play for these guys.”
“I’m excited for next year. Trying to do everything I can so we can win more games next year. I’m really sure we have the talent and the desire to win. Every single guy wants to win so bad. It’s going to be great. We have a lot of talent and a lot of guys that want to go for it.”
Shelton said overall of what he’s learned about this year’s team?
“They are resilient,” Shelton said. “You look at all three games of this series, we were down, but they came back. They like to have fun and they are athletic. Going into next year with the way the rules are going to adjust, being athletic is going to be extremely important. We got a really good, young, athletic group.”
“It’s important to emphasize that we got a good young group here and we got more coming. That’s really important, there’s more guys coming. The group we have here got a ton of opportunity to play at the Major League level this year which you can’t imitate anywhere.”