Is it fair to say we should’ve seen this coming? I’ve been talking about the number of innings this Pirate pitching staff has thrown for what seems like forever, and that certainly seems to be catching up with them as the season wears on. They just played their 12th game in 12 days and they’ve had a couple of rain delays and extra inning games and one emotionally draining marathon game in that span. It seems like the Pirates are just out of gas, and it’s not really hard to see why it’s happened.
Of course, it’s still frustrating to see Garrett Jones give the Pirates a 2-1 lead with a long home run in the first inning, only to watch Kevin Correia give it right back with a Bugs Bunny conga line around the base paths. As soon as the struggling Tyler Colvin crushed a Correia pitch nearly into the Allegheny on the fly, I was worried. It didn’t stop either, and to be honest, I’d turned the game off before Alfonso Soriano hit the fourth home run off of Corriea in the third inning. It’s been a long time since I’ve turned a Pirate game off out of frustration, but it happened tonight. The Pirates didn’t go away and they put some late runs up on the board, but it just didn’t matter tonight.
Also, it’s just completely insane that Joel Hanrahan pitched tonight. I somehow knew that I’d see his name at the bottom of the box score as the Cubs started running the score up in the second and third inning, and sure enough, there it is. It’s just completely maddening to me that Hanrahan can pitch the ninth inning of a meaningless blowout, but not for a four-out save or the tenth inning of a tie game on the road or the top of ninth inning of a one-run game at home. The lack of logic that gets us here is so completely unfathomable to me that I honestly don’t even want to consider it. It’s dumb. That’s really all the more I want to say about it right now.
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