Pirates’ Derek Shelton ‘Extremely’ Frustrated With Losing Streak

The Pittsburgh Pirates haven’t won a game since Aug. 3.

It doesn’t get much worse than how Derek Shelton’s club has performed to begin August. They’ve lost 10 in a row. They’re at the bottom of the National League Central standings. The Washington Nationals (55-66), Miami Marlins (45-75) and Colorado Rockies(44-78) are the only NL teams with worse records than the Bucs (56-64) entering Thursday.

Shelton, however, feels the record doesn’t necessarily reflect his team’s talent.

“We need to catch a break,” Shelton said in his weekly radio show on 93.7 The Fan. “We haven’t played bad baseball. We’ve lost, since the break, nine one-run games. We’ve lost, during this stretch of the eight, six one-one games. We’re just not finishing games or making the big play to get us to a victory right now. It’s extremely frustrating.”

Joe Starkey, the host of the program, pushed back on Shelton’s assessment, but that wasn’t enough for the 54-year-old to back down.

“Your definition of bad baseball may be different than my definition of bad baseball,” Shelton said. “We haven’t executed, I think that’s fair to say.”

It’s all semantics at the end of the day, The Pirates likely will play out the remainder of their schedule this season before making some much-needed changes in the offseason.

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