Another test

Yovani Gallardo shut the Pirates down last night, but the test for the newfound offense doesn’t end there. Now the Padres come to town with the league’s best pitching staff in tow, hoping to stay head of the pack in the NL West and keep the Pirates from exploding again.

The Pirates have a few things going in their favor, though. One is that the Padres’ great pitching staff is helped by pitcher-friendly Petco Park and they’re not playing there this weekend. The other is that Kevin Correia, who’s been the Padres’ worst pitcher so far this year, takes the mound to open the series tonight. And why has he been the Padres’ worst pitcher this year? Because he gives up a bunch of home runs, especially to lefties. The Pirates may be able to work with that tonight. They’re sending Paul Maholm out to the mound to try and follow up his masterful three-hit shutout of the Astros on Sunday with something other than a terrible start, which is how he followed up his last great outing just before the break.

First pitch tonight is at 7:05, Clemente/Cangelosi is after the jump.

Not sure what this is? Check here and here. Short version: in the comments pick the Pirates you think will be most and least valuable in today’s game. If you haven’t jumped aboard yet, it’s been a lot of fun so far and now’s as good a time as any to join in.

Pedro Alvarez has been so hot that he was almost a universal Clemente pick last night, which is why there are so many -1s on the scoreboard after he Cangelosi’d against Gallardo and the Brew Crew. The few +2s on the night were all for Neil Walker, who’s two hits and seventh inning double makes him the night’s Clemente. That was good news for a whole slew of people that had Ohlendorf as Cangelosi, as his strong outing made him Clemente runner-up and nearly sent a bunch of people home with rare -2s. No one picked him as Clemente, nor did anyone pick last night’s Cangelosi runner-up, Evan Meek.

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