For the second straight day, it felt like the Pirates were just a hit away from breaking this game wide open in the early innings. After James McDonald coughed up four runs in the first, the Pirates chipped away at Jhoulys Chacin. They worked counts, took free passes, and came up with some very big hits. When Lyle Overbay doubled the game tied with no outs in the third and Pedro Alvarez followed with a walk, it seemed like the Bucs were about to break the game wide open. Ryan Doumit and Garrett Jones followed with hard hit balls, but both were right at Rockies and the inning ended with a double play and a ground out. It looked like things were about to break wide open again in the fourth when a bad Chacin pick-off throw put runners at second and third with one outs for Walker and McCutchen, but the Pirates came up one big hit short again.
Those missed opportunites doomed the Pirates in the end. The Rockies’ bullpen slammed the door on the Pirates with three hitless, scoreless innings and the Pirates’ bullpen wasn’t as good. Mike Crotta came into the seventh inning with a runner on first needing to get one out and instead he walked three hitters and gave up a hit and got tagged with his first big league loss. The umpires certainly didn’t seem to help him, but he didn’t help himself, either.
After a great road series to open the year, the Pirates have now dropped three of four against the Rockies. Besides the home opener, they didn’t really play all that poorly, but the long outing by the bullpen on Friday obviously handcuffed the club a bit on Saturday and Sunday (namely that Chris Resop wasn’t available in either game, when he might usually be used to bail Veras and/or Crotta out of a tough situation before things got as bad as they did). The off-day tomorrow will be a much-needed one for pretty much everyone on the team after this rough first home series. It’d be nice to see the Bucs bounce back against the Brewers and put up some runs and wins in front of the home fans before they go back on the road.
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