Before the game, I said this: What I’d love to see the Pirates have an inning or two where they string three or four hits together and score some runs. The Pirates then went out and had two four-run innings that featured good at-bats that worked Ubaldo Jiminez and Esmil Rogers deep into counts and lots of hits. Andrew McCutchen had two hits, Xavier Paul had two hits including a big two-run triple, Pedro Alvarez had two hits and a few good at-bats, and Garrett Jones had two hits, including a two-run single.
The pitching from Charlie Morton wasn’t so great; he leaned on his sinker really heavily the first time through the lineup and didn’t get many swings and misses, then seemed to get squeezed by the home plate ump as the game progressed. He ended up walking five hitters and only striking out one through 5 1/3 innings. Still, he managed to keep things together pretty well and left the game with an 8-2 lead that only shrunk when Michael Crotta (as an aside, I thought it was weird that Hurdle brought Crotta in after Morton got squeezed pretty badly on his sinkers through almost six innings) couldn’t manage to get the last outs in the sixth with two of Morton’s runners on. The rest of the bullpen (Beimel, Veras, and Hanrahan) were fine, though, and made the four-run lead hold up.
And so here we are on May 1st, and the 2011 Pirates have already won as many road series as they did in 2010. They’ve got three more on the road against the Padres this coming week before playing the Astros at PNC next weekend. Taking two of three from the Rockies is awfully nice, but it’ll be even nicer if the Bucs can follow it up with some wins against lesser teams.
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