Game 53: Pirates 5 Mets 1

For seven innings it looked like this game was an extension of last night’s; an underwhelming Mets starter racking up strike outs and setting the meekly down while a good start goes to waste. To that point, only Josh Harrison and Jose Tabata, two very good contact hitters, had hits against RA Dickey and those two plus Dusty Brown, who presumably spent some time with Tim Wakefield at some point while he was in Boston, seemed like the only two hitters that even had the slightest clue against the knuckler. 

Things turned around just as quickly in the eighth, though. Ronny Cedeno lead off with a hit, then something something (this is me politely glossing over the insane decision to try and make poor Dusty Brown bunt a knuckle ball, then Matt Diaz’s pathetic-looking pinch-hit attempt) Jose Tabata got hit by a pitch to set the stage for Harrison. The kid came through, too, with his second hit of the night and his first career RBI to tie the game at one. After Andrew McCutchen drew a walk (no small feat after three of the ugliest at-bats you’ve ever seen that resulted in nearly 1/3 of Dickey’s 10 strikeouts), Neil Walker finally kept his hands back and lined a knuckler up the middle for a two-RBI single and the lead. 

And just like that, we get an awesome narrative shift. Now, there’s no need to linger on the Pirates’ ugly offensive performance from the last couple nights or Dickey’s career-high 10 strikeouts. Instead, we can talk about James McDonald putting together another strong start (six innings, five strikeouts, two walks, six hits, one run scored on an infield single), an awesome evening by the bullpen (three perfect innings from Evan Meek, Jose Veras, and Joel Hanrahan), and Harrison’s great debut. 

Really, this one’s about the pitching staff. The offense was baffled the first three times through the order against Dickey, but McDonald and co. kept things close enough for them to have a chance. They finally came through, though, and honestly, it was pretty fantastic to watch it all unfold.