The first thing to mention about this afternoon’s game is Andrew McCutchen’s leadoff homer. Before the game even started, I wrote this about his quick return to the lineup: “
Thumped in the head with a fastball last night, scared the holy bejus out of everyone, and is back in the lineup like 16 hours later.” And then he homers in the first inning. There are few Pirates that routinely exceed my expectations as often as McCutchen does.
The rest of the game is much more blah to talk about. I thought John Russell did a good job yanking Jeff Karstens after five innings with the Pirates still in the game, but of course today he had to go to Sean Gallagher, Wil Ledezma, and Steven Jackson to bridge the gap to the back of his bullpen instead of DJ Carrasco and that went about as well as you’d expect. Of course, we might not ever need to see either of them pitch again (stay tuned for the next post!), so I guess we’ve got that going for us.
That trio made sure that it was way too late for Jeff Clement and Pedro Alvarez’s homer to matter on a micro-scale, but seeing them both homer is never technically a bad thing for a team that’s practically mathematically eliminated already. Rocco DeMaro promised discussion of Garrett Jones vs. Jeff Clement on his post-game show and I’m thinking he’s on the right track with that line of thought.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
