Just yesterday afternoon, I noted that the Pirates hadn’t struck many hitters out in the early goings of 2012. AJ Burnett responded by whiffing eight Braves last night, then Erik Bedard followed with nine strikeouts in five innings tonight. Coming into this series the Braves weren’t a particularly easy team to strike out coming into this series, but thorugh two games in it Bedard and Burnett have done what the Pirates hoped they would do when they brought them in over the winter.
The biggest drawback to Bedard’s performance tonight was that he wasn’t terribly efficient in recording nine strikeouts over just five innings of work. He needed 96 pitches to get that far, with a whole bunch of them coming in the fifth inning. Bedard started that inning out with a 4-1 lead, but walked Livan Hernandez and gave up a single to Michael Bourn to give the Braves two baserunners and no outs at the top of the NL’s best lineup. Bedard bore down, though, getting a Martin Prado pop-out, a nine-pitch strikeout of Freddie Freeman, and a four-pitch strikeout of Dan Uggla. The Pirates are obviously being careful with him, which is warranted given his health history, but he was more than good enough tonight to deserve his first win of the season.
For once, the Pirates’ rewarded him. They managed a run in the first despite only getting one hit (an Alex Presley single), then strung three hits together over the course of the second inning to put two more runs on the board. They finished scoring in the fifth when Pedro Alvarez worked the count full against Randall Delgado, then roped a fastball into left field for an RBI double. Given that lead and a long night after Bedard’s exit, the back end of the bullpen was fantastic with Jason Grilli and Joel Hanrahan striking out five straight hitters before the game ended with Jose Tabata making a great leaping catch to rob Eric Hinske of extra bases.
It wasn’t a perfect game for the Pirates (they stopped scoring in the fifth and again failed to get past the five-run barrier, plus Chris Resop and Juan Cruz looked a little shaky out of the bullpen), but it was an all-around pretty solid win and a nice bounce back after Friday’s rough game.
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