I’ve been in Chapel Hill for almost three full years now, and while it rains on a lot of summer nights it rarely ever rains. So when the clouds started rolling in this afternoon, my friends and I all shrugged them off. We’ve all been to Durham Bulls games that have had rain delays before, but they’ve rarely lasted longer than 20 minutes. As we drove closer to Durham, the rain started pouring down hard and it became clear that this game would at least be delayed. We decided to stop off in a bar near the ballpark to get some food and drink and I promised to closely monitor Indy broadcaster Scott McCauley’s Twitter feed to find out if or when the game would be played.
As I was checking for updates on the rain delay, something unexpected happened. Tweets about James McDonald started pouring in. His strikeouts were piling up as he breezed through the Rockies lineup. We got to the bar and I found a TV that had the Pirates game on. By the time I started watching he wasn’t quite in the groove he was to open the game, but he was still throwing his fastball 91-93 and spotting it beautifully with his big looping curve and his perfectly spotted changeup. For once, a pitcher the Pirates traded for came in and did everything I had hoped he was capable of.
The PitchFX backs the outing up, too. His fastball averaged 93, almost touched 96, and set up his 81 mph changeup perfectly. He threw the change 16 times for 10 strikes and seven of those ten were of the swinging variety. The curve was even slower at 77 and he was able to throw it consistently for strikes. Check out his velocity graph from tonight (pulled from the always-great Brooks Baseball at the first link):
That’s beautiful. And it’s just one start and we’ve had pitchers start well with the Pirates and flame out before, but this feels like something different tonight. Now all he has to do is get back out there and do it again.
In the end, the Bulls/Indians game was rained out for what happened to be the Bulls first rainout in 271 home games. But the Pirates pulled out a great win with McDonald, some timely hitting, and solid bullpen work from (among others) Wil Ledezma and Chris Resop. So I won’t get to see Indianapolis play this year (the Indians are in Durham all weekend, but I’m coming home tomorrow for Walkoff Walk‘s Heist at PNC on Saturday), but I’m having a hard time feeling like it was a bad night.
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