I got home last night at just after 11 PM, so I did what I normally do on nights like that and flipped the TV on to the Extra Innings channel while loading up MLB.com to see if the Pirates were still on. I saw that not only where they still on, but they were winning 7-4 in the eighth inning AND the game was on the HD channel. Triple score!
I turned the game on as the ball Chris Iannetta hit was literally in the air and headed over the fence to make the score 7-7. This was not a good sign. When the Pirates came to the plate in the top of the ninth, I thought to myself, “We have to score here, or we won’t win.” We didn’t score. Then Todd Helton hit a ball about 800 feet while the stupid, pompous Rockies’ announcers freaked out about how relevant the Rockies were again now that they’d won 15 of 16 and pulled to within, oh, 9 1/2 games of first place. Yeah, they didn’t mention that. This is one of those games that we thought would probably happen coming into the season, but since our ‘pen has been better than expected, the end of that game last night kind of hit like a sledgehammer.
On the bright side, it seems like Charlie Morton pitched well last night. PitchFX measured his fastball as averaging 92 mph and the graph shows that he topped that number quite a bit. His curve and changeup also seemed to give a nice change of pace with some movement, so we can call this an encouraging first start, I think, given his line for the night (2 ER in 5 innings with 2 BB and 5 K). He also got some good backing defense from Nyjer Morgan and Andrew McCutchen, while ‘Cutch added his fourth triple of the year with the bases loaded in the seventh.
Those brigh spots don’t make this loss much easier to swallow, though.
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