Pittsburgh Pirates Takeaways & Throwaways – Game One

In Game One of the 2016 season, the Pittsburgh Pirates put down the St. Louis Cardinals by a score of 4-1. Here now are the takeaways and throwaways from the win.

The Pittsburgh Pirates certainly gave their fans plenty to celebrate on Opening Day, with a 4-1 win against one of their chief rivals.

Here now are the takeaways and throwaways from the win

• Francisco Liriano set the tone early, showing off his typical strikeout ability. Early on, he relied on the slider almost exclusively as his out-pitch, but did a great job in mixing in his off-speed offerings. Liriano’s stuff had great late movement over the first three innings of the game, and it took Cardinals hitters a few innings to adjust. Liriano finished with Ten strikeouts in six innings.
• It was an afternoon of productive debuts for the Pittsburgh Pirates, with David Freese, John Jaso and Neftali Feliz providing meaningful contributions in their first meaningful games with the Pirates. Freese showed off his glove on several spectacular plays and went 2-for-4 in the field. Jaso had a very nice play at first base early on and helped open the scoring – along with noted Pirates slugger Liriano – in the second. Feliz pitched the eighth – more on that shortly – and showed well, needing only 11 pitches to end his frame.
• Feliz was seen in the eighth as Tony Watson worked the seventh rather than his customary penultimate frame. Manager Clint Hurdle hinted at this new approach before the game, and had the perfect chance to test it, as the Cardinals sent three left-handers to bat in the seventh. Watson made quick work of each.
• In a bigger sense, it was a solid debut for the new approach the team is taking to hitting. The team was benefited several times by productive at bats. Even though he did not factor into any run creation, Andrew McCutchen came to the plate with prime RBI opportunities several times.
• As stated above, Liriano was absolutely filthy at times, but was also funky. His final line showed five walks, and just 50 of his 94 pitches accounted for strikes. While many will take such a line, this may be indicative of why Liriano has not been able to top 200 innings in his career. While that is an arbitrary number to begin with, Such a yin-yang approach can lead to some crooked numbers when the deception isn’t working. Today was not one of those days, however.
• The team was still susceptible to momentary lapses, with one official error and a notable base running gamble by Gregory Polanco late in the game.
• For as well as the new on-base centric approach looked at times, it did not stop the Pirates from leaving eight men on base. Starling Marte left five on the bags. The team did not need the extra runs today, but for a team that felt almost allergic to the big inning in 2015, this will be a trend to keep an eye on.
• Mark Melancon worked an up-and-down ninth to end the proceedings. Melancon got into trouble early by allowing two on – one via HBP – but buckled down to get Matt Adams to fly out.

W: Francisco Liriano (1-0)

L: Adam Wainwright (0-1)

Line of the night: Liriano finished with a line both curious and historic.

Francisco Liriano is the first pitcher in the history of baseball to have the 6 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 5 BB, 10 K line

— August Fagerstrom (@August_DF) April 3, 2016

NEXT UP: The Pirates are off on Monday, and will resume the series on Tuesady, April 4 at PNC Park. Gametime is at 7:05 PM. Please check out our series preview for further in-depth analysis.