No wins, no sweat: Hillcats' Uviedo is pitching well

At some point, the victories will come for Hillcats pitcher Ronald Uviedo. Until then, he’ll have to be satisfied with stringing together strong performances.

From the development angle, the Pirates are OK with that. Lynchburg rallied to beat Frederick 6-5 on Wednesday afternoon, though most of the 4,496 screaming schoolchildren present for the team’s annual Say No To Drugs Day were gone by the time Ray Chang slapped a two-out, two-run double in the bottom of the eighth to give the Hillcats the lead.

Uviedo left after five innings with a 2-0 lead, the best of his four outings this season. He allowed two hits — both infield singles — struck out five and walked none. He overpowered the Keys with his fastball and befuddled them with his rapidly improving changeup. The five whitewash innings lowered his ERA to a miniscule 1.20 through three starts.

“I feel good,” the soft-spoken Venezuelan said. “I threw my changeup against the righthanders and my slider against the lefthanders.”

Uviedo is one of two Hillcats on the Pirates’ 40-man roster (Pedro Alvarez is the other), so it’s clear Pittsburgh likes what they’ve seen out of Uviedo early in his career. The Pirates signed him in 2005 when the Seattle Mariners released him from their Venezuelan Summer League squad. He started 10 games for the Mariners’ VSL team in 2005 but worked exclusively as a reliever in Pittsburgh’s system until this year.

He made a quick stop in Lynchburg in 2007 (four appearances) before being sent down first to State College (short-season A) and then Hickory (low-A). He made 33 appearances in Hickory last season before coming to Lynchburg for seven appearances at the end of last season.

Though he’s allowed just two earned runs in 12 innings, he’s still looking for that elusive first high-A victory.

That aside, his stuff is coming along fine. The Pirates moved him into a starter’s role to try to get Uviedo to work his offspeed stuff into his repertoire. He was far too reliant on his plus fastball as a reliever, and he worked up in the zone, making him susceptible to home runs (eight in 72 innings in Hickory last year). He allowed a home run in each of his first two starts this year.

The changeup helps induce ground balls, and that was evident Wednesday. He recorded 15 outs — five by strikeout, four groundouts and six fly balls. There was also an error to lead off the game on a routine ground ball.

“He didn’t try to do too much,” Hillcats pitching coach Wally Whitehurst said. “He threw a few more breaking balls, which is better, instead of just going fastball-changeup. He gets a lot of foul balls because he uses his changeup so much, so his pitch count gets up there pretty quick. But today, he mixed in a slider pretty good and kept his pitch count down after the first inning.

“He throws strikes for the most part, and he changes speed well. If he continues to pitch this way, he’ll win ball games. Hopefully he’ll be out there long enough for us to score some runs for him.”

When Uviedo was on the hill, he was greeted by the continual buzz of loud children in the stands. Students were bussed in from all over Central Virginia for the promotional day, but most left by the middle of the seventh when Frederick tagged Lynchburg reliever Harrison Bishop for four runs to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 5-2 lead.

That made for an odd discrepancy in conditions for the players on the field. When the Hillcats rallied in the eighth, there were less than a hundred fans remaining, giving Chang’s at-bat an almost batting-practice feel.

“When they left, it was just dead silent,” Chang said.

With Kris Watts on second and speedy Marcus Davis at first, Chang worked Frederick reliever Luis Lebron to a 3-1 count and poked a fastball into a wide-open gap in left center, allowing both runs to score for a 6-5 lead.

Said Chang: “It was nice to come through.”