The Buccos got off to their usual start. Behind early. Only this time it wasn’t perennial “run surrendering guy” Matt Morris, it was Ian Snell.
Snell’s actually been a decent pitcher for the Pirates, which on the surface isn’t that difficult a thing to do. The Buccos haven’t had a winning season since Barry Lamar played there, and that was 16 years ago. Snell is supposed to be one of the long term blocks of the Pirates rotation, and outside of the first inning, he didn’t really do that bad. Ian gave up four runs overall, and all of them were in the first inning. After that he settled down and threw five innings of shutout ball.
In the bottom of the fourth, the Pirates strung together a few singles, and got a sac fly, which scored two. OK, that’s helpful, but then in the following frame, Jason Bay smacked a two run home run off Cardinals starter Todd Wellmeyer to tie the game up at four apiece. A few more singles sandwiched around a double brought in three more runs in the bottom of the eighth to give the Pirates the lead, and the eventual win. Domaso Marte, who followed Snell, got the win, and Matt Capps picked up his sixth save of the season so far. That’s an interesting number as the Pirates only have nine wins total. That’s a better percentage than Steve Carlton’s 27 wins in 1972 for the Phillies, the year they only won 59 games total!
Nate McClouth, a bright spot for the Pirates took an ofer tonight, but his average is still pretty darned good at .349.
Other offensive highlights for the Pirates were doubles by Xavier Nady and the rookie Brian Bixler. There was the aforementioned home run by Jason Bay, as well as eight other singles. Was a nice comeback win, and in PNC Park, too. Good feeling for the Pirates in this one, for sure.
What the heck is all this?
I covered another game, as I there was no way I could bring myself to cover the fiasco in Detroit tonight. On top of that, I spent most of the night watching weather reports about all the storms in the area, and only superficially paid attention to the Rangers game. Here’s all I have to say about the Rangers and this one:

I don’t know why, but the path to a win now seems worse than the terrain of the Hartz Mountains of Asia. There was a momentary feeling that we were over our blip of bad play there, but we definitely seem mired in the mud, that’s for sure. Our starting pitching is generally doing well, there doesn’t seem to be any one glaring thing that if it was fixed, you could say “Hey, we’d be 14-7 instead of 7-14”. Just don’t seem to be able to get out of our own way.
Milton Bradley has been a nice surprise, as has the starting pitching ERA. Josh Hamilton was tied for the league lead in RBI’s after this game, so it’s not like we’re total shite. I’m reminded of a graphic I’ve used before here. Seems appropriate again.

As for the specific game, there isn’t much fun to say about it. Frank Catalanotto’s early home run was a nice feeling, but that was pretty much wiped out by the three home runs Detroit got in the third. I saw that before I started skipping forward on my TiVo. Anyone else expecting Padilla to plunk someone in the back? I certainly was.
I don’t think we’re quite at the point where I’m ready to panic, but I am now skipping more of the games on my TiVo than I’m actually watching.
P.S. Josh Lewin should probably understand the references at the top of this post.

You know, I thought I was disgusted after Sunday’s game, and being disgusted with that to the point where I had a one word review. This one annoyed me more, and I’ve written quite a few more words. But it still boils down to a one word exclamation.
SHIT!!!

SHIT.

Jason Jennings bounced back, had a decent outing on Saturday against the Red Sox. Gave up just two runs in six innings. Unfortunately, Joaquin Benoit blew it late and gave up a home run to Manny Ramirez, giving the Sox the win.
Dammit.

That picture pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? As a habitual nail biter myself, I can understand Gerald Laird’s doing so here.
This game was a mess. Of course, the big blast was David Ortiz’ grand slam in the third inning. Mendoza’s outing really hurt the overall team pitching. TR Sullivan said it very well, with this:

Mendoza gave up seven runs in all, as his ERA went from 1.80 in his first two starts to 9.00. The Rangers’ rotation ERA also went up from 3.65 — third best in the league — to 4.18.

Ugh – ugh – UGH! To add to the lovely overall performance, we had another error, this time by the guy wearing Rusty Greer’s old number; Jason Botts. All three Rangers pitchers (Mendoza, Rupe, Nippert) gave up runs, although one of Nippert’s was a result of Botts’ error.

Rangers batters had only six hits overall. Only one was a single. Four doubles and a home run. The home run was Hank Blalock’s, and the swing reminded me of that home run he had in Chicago a few years back in the All Star game. It looked nice.

In all a pretty craptacular performance by the Rangers out there.

Given this Wednesday was my daughter’s birthday, and my mother was in town this week for the event, I didn’t spend much time thinking about the Rangers outside the time I watched the games, so I tuned in for this one, and saw Roy Halladay, and got bummed. He dominated us last week, and generally it’s hard to beat a pitcher like that. But, as the saying goes, that’s why you play the games.

The Rangers started by making a few roster moves, and rested some guys. Michael Young did not play, nor did Hank Blalock. Playing short was swiss army knife (thanks Josh) Ramon Vazquez. Playing third was a kid making his major league debut, German Duran. A few other roster moves had to be made to make room for Duran, as he wasn’t on the 40 man roster, either. The 40 man roster was to move Thomas Diamond to the 60 day disabled list, and the 25 man move was to put Marlon Byrd on the 15 day DL. I don’t recall much being said about Byrd being hurt, I wonder if this is one of those fake DL moves or not. Anyway, watching Duran at the plate against Halladay was somewhat painful. Felt bad for the kid, as he was up three times, and struck out three times. He also looked like a kid. He was born after I graduated high school (June 1983), which is becoming a far more common occurrence. Still, it probably was a major thrill for the kid, which was cool to see. For some reason, seeing kids make their major league debut continues to be something fun to watch. Haven’t gotten THAT jaded about the game yet. ;)

Vicente Pidente took the hill for the Rangers, and followed up the previous game’s performance by Kason Gabbard with one of his own. Vicente went seven innings, giving up seven hits, three walks, but most importantly just a single run. Jamey Wright and CJ Wilson followed up with scoreless frames of their own, sealing the win. But Pidente looked pretty darned good, and I’m wondering if all the talk about him being a different player in the spring is true. He’s now 2-1 with a 3.12 ERA. Pretty decent numbers for the first couple of weeks of the season. Extrapolated over the whole season, that’s 24 wins. That’s probably dreaming, but it’s a great start, I hope it continues.

David Murphy had three doubles in this game. Too bad some of them couldn’t have come in the previous game when we had 6,334 men left on base. Still, three doubles against a Cy Young pitcher is nothing dismiss too lightly. Murphy was the only Rangers batter to get anything other than a single against Halladay.

Josh Hamilton’s monster home run power hasn’t shown up yet, but he continues to hit the ball hard, no matter what he does (single, pop up, or foul). When that light goes on, I wonder if we’ll start hearing talk about the old “Hit it here – win a suit” sign that used to be on top of the scoreboard in right field at our park. You think if all the planets align right, he probably COULD do that. Or, he could hit one into one of the hotel rooms in Toronto, too.

Come on Josh, “Hit it here!”