Here’s the thing about this particular Pittsburgh Pirate team: this was more or less a perfect baseball game today. AJ Burnett had some control issues, but it didn’t matter because he was virtually unhittable against the dynamic young Cub lineup. The defense made plays behind him: Andrew McCutchen made a fantastic sliding catch/pop-up throw double play, Francisco Cervelli caught two runners stealing, and they only made one error (this is an improvement for this infield). The offense had trouble with Jake Arrieta, but who doesn’t? The scrapped out a run against him to take a 1-0 lead, and piled on against the Cubs’ suspect bullpen. The Pirates faced a good team and a good pitcher and they won pretty handily.
Here’s the other thing about this particular Pittsburgh Pirate team: this was the first time in five days that it looked like they knew how to play baseball. In the four games preceding this one, they lost because they couldn’t hit or they lost because they couldn’t pitch or they lost because they couldn’t field, or they combined all three of those things together in some way, shape, or form.
There needs to be more of the Sunday Pirates. There needs to be less of the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday Pirates.
Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images
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