Sorry for the lack of posts this weekend; I was out of town for a wedding until this morning, and so I missed the bulk of this series. As it turns out, this is probably the Pirates’ biggest series victory of the year, non-St. Louis Cardinals division, as taking three of four from the Giants puts the Pirates nine games up on the Giants, who are currently the first team out of the wild card race. Nothing’s settled yet, of course, but as we stand in the early morning of August 24th, the Pirates certainly look to be in good shape for a playoff appearance this year.
This game itself was pretty standard, as Pirate games go lately. The Pirates jumped all over Ryan Vogelsong in the first inning, and Andrew McCutchen and Pedro Alvarez added solo homers later on. The Pirates left quite a few hitters on base and probably could’ve busted this game open at some point, but they didn’t need to, as Francisco Liriano spent 5 1/3 innings minimizing the damage done by his walks and the awful defense behind him (both runs were a result of bad defense, with lots of ugly work from Alvarez with a little bit of Neil Walker issues mixed in). Arquimedes Caminero bailed Liriano out of a fifth inning jam, and then Soria, Watson, and Melancon shut the Giants down over the last three innings.
The Cardinals and Cubs both won today, so the Pirate win kept pace. The Pirates are now a season-high 26 games over .500, which matches their best record relative to .500 in the last three years (they hit 26 games over after sweeping the Reds to close out the 2013 season). After three weeks in which the Pirates have played pretty much every serious National League contender, the Pirates see the Marlins, Rockies, and Brewers next before heading to Busch Stadium. They’re 3 1/2 behind the Cardinals now — if they treat the bad teams the way they treated the contenders, there’s a chance they’ll be even closer than that when they get into St. Louis.
Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
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