If a week ago it seemed that nobody wanted to win the National League’s second wild card, suddenly the situation looks a little bit different on the season’s third-to-last Saturday. The Pirates have been slicing through the Cubs and Phillies like a hot knife through butter with seven wins in eight games, but they only managed to build a 1 1/2 game lead in the second wild card race because the Brewers have now responded with three wins in a row of their own this week. The Braves seem to be slowly fading (they lost again this afternoon and are now 3 1/2 behind the Pirates before the Bucs’ game tonight), but it only takes two teams to make a race.
Anyway, the Pirates have indeed won seven of their last eight, and they’ve scored 46 runs in those eight games. They are absolutely destroying whatever it is that the Cubs and Phillies are calling pitching staffs at the moment, and it’s been a ton of fun to watch. I know that I sound like a broken record, but the Pirates have to keep on keeping on with this latest trend right now, because both the NL Central and second wild card races are close enough for something unpredictable to happen in the season’s last 2+ weeks.
Jeff Locke starts for the Pirates tonight and he’s coming off of what might have been his best start of 2014 against the Phillies last Monday. He struck out nine Phillies and somehow managed to not walk anyone, holding them to one run on three hits in seven innings of work. I can’t really see any clear change in pitch usage from that game, it really just looks to me like he threw his fastball for strikes more regularly than he did in his previous start, and things blossomed out from there. It’ll probably be relatively easy to tell relatively quickly which Jeff Locke we get tonight. This Cub team has a poor concept of the strike zone, though, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see Locke with a decent start even if his command isn’t quite as good tonight.
Felix Doubront starts for the Cubs. He was not hugely impressive against the Pirates the last time out, though he did manage to get through five innings with only two runs on the scoreboard. The Pirate team that looked like they couldn’t hit a lefty to save their lives at the mid-season point is suddenly feasting on lefties, though, and having seen Doubront a week ago, I’m practically expecting a crooked number on the board tonight.
First pitch is at 7:10.
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