I don’t know if the Pirates did something differently tonight than they did in the previous ten days or if the Giants’ own losing streak is the immovable object to the Pirates’ unstoppable force or if all of the planets just correctly aligned tonight, but man, does it feel good to see the Pirates win a baseball game.
After two weeks of awful baseball that culminated in one of the ugliest series I can remember, the Pirates were a team transformed in San Francisco tonight. That was mostly due to Charlie Morton, who just went out and shut down the Giants’ right-handed batters all night long and kept the lefties (except Nate Schierholtz) at bay long enough to get eight shutout innings, scattering six hits and three walks on his way to his ninth win. Really, this is the second time in a row he’s stepped up and given the Pirates a start capable of ending this losing streak. The difference tonight is that the rest of the team could make something of it.
Garrett Jones continued his post-deadline hot streak with four hits. Andrew McCutchen had a couple of hits and Ryan Ludwick continued his own little mini-hot streak with two hits and two RBIs. As it turned out, the 2-0 lead the Pirates had before the Giants even came to bat was enough, but the insurance runs were nice, too.
It was far from a perfect game: Morton’s still walking hitters and not getting a ton of strikeouts and his lefty/right splits are still troubling. The defense behind him tonight wasn’t perfect. There were some bad base running mistakes and some runners left on base that shouldn’t have been. But the Pirates were good enough to win tonight, and we haven’t been able to say that for a long time. It wasn’t perfect, but at least it’s a start.
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