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About an hour ago
Trevor Williams spoke softly, but with conviction and determination, while trying to explain what was wrong for him this season.
He was brutalized Monday night by the Washington Nationals. It lasted only the first two rounds of the Pittsburgh Pirates' 13-0 loss to a crowd of 11,284 at PNC Park. Among the first 10 appearances at the Nationals plaque, he gave in to Adam Eaton, Matt Adams and Trea Turner. He produced a line of eight-point statistics, six hits (five for extra goals), three walks and a wild pitch.
The loss was the 28 piratesth in the last 35 games, but even that miserable stretch seemed trivial compared to Williams' free fall over the past year.
In his last 13 starts last season, he has awarded 11 earned runs in 76 innings and two-thirds. He was one of the best baseball pitchers.
This month, in four starts and 18 innings, he made 20 earned runs. Keeping him in the starting rotation of the Pirates with a 5.65 EER spanning the entire season would raise questions, but Williams promised to work to improve.
"What you do if you're a fighter, what it is," said director, Clint Hurdle, "roll up your sleeves and get back to work."
What can he do?
"It's a work of video, mound, throwing, brain," said Williams. "It's a lot of things. We are looking for trust in my launcher and great player ability to find the right answer.
"We thought it could have been an arm lunge. We thought it could have been a switch. We thought it could have been a lot of different things.
"Being a pitcher, you have to have a short-term memory. I know I'm a good pitcher. I know this stretch does not define me. "
Hurdle said Williams did not want to leave the match and the coach would have preferred another run of his own. The match was the second in two nights when the pen was needed before the end of the fifth inning.
"But at some point, I do not think the pitcher has an advantage," said Hurdle.
"It's a low level I will never forget," said Williams. "You could ask me this question in two or three years: could it have been a turning point? It could have happened, but bad starts will occur throughout your career. It's just a question of how to get out of it. "
Williams spent 33 days on the injured list (secondary effort) from mid-May to mid-June after throwing 101 or more shots in four straight games. His ERA was 3.33 when he went on the IL, and he allowed the St. Louis Cardinals only one run in seven innings. After Monday, his ERA sits at 5.65.
He said he was healthy now, but he does not deny that the time he spent outside of the game could have affected his way of throwing.
"There is a possibility," he says. "It was my first time on the IL. The way I used my time in IL could have been different, I do not know, because it was my first time.
"But I do not use that as an excuse. We seek answers and try to understand what is happening. Before the injury, it was going pretty well.
"However, I am in good health. My body feels good. It's a game of adjustments and the league is reacting faster than ever. "
Of course, Williams is not the only Pirates player to fight for the moment. The drummers stopped hitting.
The Pirates have been excluded twice in the last three games and have only eight points and 26 hits in the last five games.
Hurdle was asked what he could say to a team in such a prolonged slump.
"We are trying to maintain a difficult season," he said. "We talked to the team (Monday) You do not talk to a team four times a day, I do not think any of us like to be a harp.
"We remind them when we think things are appropriate, especially the appropriate games. The best way I have found to do this is to remove them individually and have conversations individually. It has a lot more sense and meaning. "
Jerry DiPaola is an editor of Tribune-Review. You can contact Jerry by email at [email protected] or via Twitter .
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