At this juncture in the last turn of the Pirates’ rotation, the Bucs had dropped two straight games mostly on the arms of Brad Lincoln and Kevin Correia. The hope at that point was that Erik Bedard would shore things up and stop the Pirates’ losing streak in its tracks. Bedard instead got shelled by his old team and the Pirates’ losing streak stretched to four. This time around, the Pirates won both Lincoln and Correia’s starts thanks to a suddenly revitalized offense that’s scoring runs like crazy lately.
That means that the biggest question tonight is in fact Bedard himself. After getting off to a great start this year, Bedard’s slowly been fading a bit. In his last five starts, he’s thrown 25 innings, struck out 18 hitters, and walked 15. In two of his last three starts, he’s failed to get out of the fourth inning as his control problems have caused him to run up big pitch counts early. Given his injury history, I’m concerned that a lack of control portends something worse. Hopefully Bedard can put together a nice start and get back on track and allay those fears a bit. His opponent is Francisco Liriano, who is no longer good at throwing baseballs in a fashion that prevents opponents from scoring runs. Unfortunatley, Liriano is one of those guys that strikes out a ton of hitters and has been struggling with his control this year. You know, like Jake Arrieta or Max Scherzer. If the Pirates can take some pitches tonight, they’ll be fine. If they can’t, you’re going to be reading about the resurgence of Francisco Liriano tomorrow morning.
First pitch tonight is at 7:05.
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