It’s the kind of day that, given the way things have been going for the Pirates and Rowdy Tellez, is bittersweet.
Tellez, with Pittsburgh facing his old team in the Toronto Blue Jays, had his best game in months (although that might not be saying a whole lot) with 2 singles and a double, 4 RBI and a walk. He was the sole driver of a Pirate offense that lost 5-4 and left over a dozen men on base.
He opened with a walk in the second inning before smacking a single to right field off Blue Jays starter Chris Bassitt.
It was quite the anomaly to see; Tellez had not driven in a run since May 5th, just a few days shy of an entire month ago. From the time he hit his last RBI until today, Tellez had gone 4 for 40, batting .100 with an OPS of .222.
That hit drove in Connor Joe and opened the scoring for the Pirates, giving them a 1-0 lead.
But as if seeing Tellez actually 1) get on base and 2) drive in a run wasn’t crazy enough, he really got rowdy when he did it a second time.
In the fifth inning, Tellez slammed a sharp line drive into center field, which scored Oneil Cruz and Ke’Bryan Hayes to reclaim the lead at 3-1.
Tellez also should have probably had another double in the seventh inning, but Jays center fielder Daulton Varsho made up a ton of ground to make a beautiful grab.
By any baseball player’s standards, that was a good day, but by Tellez’s Pirate standards, it was the game of his life.
Toronto Tellez truly hits different.
However, with that tremendous performance comes a bittersweet thought. This game very likely bought him a lot, and I mean a LOT of time to stick on the major league roster for the Pirates.
And that likely isn’t going to sit well with the majority of Pirates fans, and rightfully so. Even with his excellent performance today, he still has a very subpar batting line on the season.
Factoring in today’s work in Toronto, Tellez is still only batting .188 on the season and carrying an OPS that remains under .500.
He still has just a single home run for a guy that was advertised as a power hitter. He just now crossed into the double digits in RBI, on June 2nd in 50th game of the year.
That just isn’t an acceptable stat line.
We’ve seen this before from Tellez however. He gives you one game that makes you think that maybe this time he can spark the turnaround, but it has never actually came.
Though the RBI didn’t come through last time, Tellez had a decent multi hit game back on May 17th. Shortly after that game, I wrote about how this was Rowdy’s last chance. That he needed to gain momentum from that game and start to build back to playing some respectable baseball.
Instead, he did the exact opposite of that, but his job security never seemed to be in any danger, even as the slump got more and more horrific by the day.
Management, and in particular Derek Shelton, clung onto the belief and the hope that Tellez could finally find it in himself to get things going. That’s why he found himself still regularly in the lineup and near the top of the team lead in games played.
So I have no doubt that this flash in the pan becomes the latest thing that the team clings to, even if Tellez can’t build off of this in the near future.
If he does, well then that’s truly excellent. But if he doesn’t (and history suggests he won’t), this game will be the one that kept him around much longer than it should have – again.
(Featured photo by Rhona Wise/AP)
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