The Pirates offense is currently held together by duct tape and Andrew McCutchen and their starting pitcher tonight is a guy that I’d consider to be the least intriguing starter (Jeff Karstens, and please not that I’m not saying he hasn’t been good; just that he’s not that interesting) on the club by a pretty wide margin, and I’m still psyched for this game tonight. The Pirates have played exciting baseball for this entire homestand thus far, and getting a fifth win in six games against the Phillies and Diamondbacks would make for heck of a bounceback week after last Thursday’s debacle at Citi Field.
Against Karstens, the D’Backs are sending Josh Collmenter to the mound. He started the year in the bullpen and has recently pitched his way into the rotation. He’s got an impressive 1.25 ERA, but a pretty low strikeout rate (5.4 K/9) and a pretty low groundball rate (39.2%). That means he’s got to be due for some regression, I think, though I’m uncertain if a starting lineup with Xavier Paul, Josh Harrison, Lyle Overbay, Ronny Cedeno, and Dusty Brown is capable of forcing any overachieving pitcher back towards the mean.
First pitch tonight is at 7:05. Bucs have a shot to be above .500 this late in a season for the first time since 1999.
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