Game 11: Pirates 5 Reds 4

Well. That was unexpected. The Pirates have established a pretty well-worn pattern so far in this young season of scoring early, then having the bats fall asleep the second, third, and fourth times through the lineup. Tonight was no exception to that with two runs in the first (with McCutchen and Milledge continuing their good work from last night) and once in the second (a Ronny Cedeno homer), then did absolutely nothing for six innings while the Reds chipped away at the 3-1 lead the Bucs had built to turn it into a 4-3 lead for themselves.

Thanks to great work by Evan Meek and a shutout inning by Jack Taschner, that was all the further things went, and after Steve Blass started the Francisco Cordero countdown in about the fifth inning (saying stuff like, “The Pirates have three more at-bats, but it’s more like two with Cordero waiting to pitch the ninth!” I had an oddly good feeling about the Pirates’ chances. Those materialized when Cordero completely lost his stuff, walking Ronny Cedeno (who is not easy to walk and had in fact not drawn a walk before the ninth inning tonight), Akinori Iwamura, and Lastings Milledge (who is also not terribly easy to walk) all after a Ryan Church single that tied the game up. Andrew McCutchen nearly ended the game before Milledge even got up with a rocket line drive to left that was hit right at Chris Dickerson, but it ended up not mattering because Garrett Jones followed the game-tying walk with what was nearly a walkoff grand slam, but instead was a really, really long game-winning single to right center field. So the Pirates now have six wins this year with three of them coming in the last at-bat. That’s not going to be an easy pace to keep, but I’ll take it.

I’d also like to note that between Blass’s odd canonization of Cordero and Greg Brown’s terrible calls in the bottom of the ninth, this was one of those games that made me think about clicking the “Away Broadcast” button on MLB.tv. Brown went hysterical on McCutchen’s flyout in the ninth, acting like it was either a home run or a clear gap shot that would win the game, but it was never either as it was pretty clearly hit right at Dickerson because he barely moved. Two batters later, he described Garrett Jones’ game winning hit, which was crushed off the bat and was obviously over the outfielder’s head, like an inning ending flyout until it hit the wall.

After a win like that, I guess it’s bad form to complain about the announcers, so instead let’s say hey! The Pirates have managed to get above .500 again!