It’s hard to imagine this game going more perfectly for the Pirates. Charlie Morton looked about as solid as he’s looked all year with the Pirates, throwing five shutout innings, striking out six Red Sox, walking two, and scattering four hits. Of the non-strikeout outs that he recorded, six were ground balls and only one was a fly ball (there was one double play, though I’m not sure where the other two missing outs are). Brooks Baseball is taking some time to load so I don’t have his velocities right in front of me, but from what I can tell Morton looked a lot like Charlie Morton tonight. Obviously the nature of a sports hernia means that it’s an injury that has to be monitored from start to start, but this is encouraging stuff.
Perhaps even more encouraging is that for the second time in six games, the Pirates’ bullpen followed Morton up with four scoreless innings. Since Morton was obviously on a short leash tonight, Bobby LaFromboise relieved him in the sixth and got Daniel Nava to line out on two pitches. Jared Hughes relieved LaFromboise and got two groundouts in four pitches. John Holdzkom pitched the seventh and though he was a bit wild, he struck out two Red Sox and got a groundout on 18 straight fastballs. I’m honestly not sure what the deal with Holdzkom’s fastball is, but I know that it’s 96 mph and has enough movement on it that Russell Martin sometimes has trouble catching it, even though he knows that it’s coming. It’s a wicked pitch, and it didn’t even need its usual palm-ball partner tonight. Tony Watson and Mark Melancon held down the eighth and ninth innings, even though the Pirates had already built a four-run lead. All in all, the bullpen pitched five innings, struck out five hitters, walked no one, and only allowed three hits (all from Watson and Melancon). What was a glaring weakness just two weeks ago looks entirely different today.
And of course, there was the offense. In the second inning, Russell Martin crushed a two-run homer into the right-center grandstand. In the sixth, Starling Marte obliterated a ball that left a vapor trail from home plate all the way into the Pirate bullpen (you know, the deeper bullpen). In the seventh, Josh Harrison singled, reached second on a throwing error, and scored on a Travis Snider single. The Pirates scored four runs without really needing to break a sweat.
With the win, the Pirates climb to 80-70. This is the first time in 2014 that they’ve been ten games over .500. The Braves lost and are now 75-76, 5 1/2 games behind the Pirates. It seems unlikely that they are contenders at this point. The Brewers came back to beat the Cardinals in 12 innings, so the Pirates’ lead on the second wild card remains 1 1/2 games, but the Cardinals’ NL Central lead drops to 2 1/2. At this point, just keeping the Brewers more than a game behind while the clock continues to tick is significant. As far as the NL Central is concenred, I’m still honestly skeptical that the Pirates can catch the Cards. I’m guessing that it’ll take something like ten wins in these final 12 games to do it. That seems crazy, but not quite impossible when the Pirates play complete games like this one.
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