Because the Pirates were so bad, I started watching college baseball and softball sometime around the fifth inning of this game, which in turn resulted in less attention paid to the Pirates. There was the softball College World Series game that saw Tennessee and Oklahoma trade three-run eleventh innings before a walk-off Oklahoma home run in the twelfth. There was a crazy UNC/Florida Atlantic regional final game that was supposed to be starting around the time I went home from work today (I could see lots of traffic headed to the game since like half of the roads in town are currently closed for construction now that the academic year is over), only to get delayed two hours by rain. UNC, as the #1 overall seed in the tournament, wasn't even supposed to have to play an elimination game in this regional and carried a 6-2 lead into the top of the ninth, only to serve up a solo homer and then a grand slam that gave Florida Atlantic an 8-6 lead. That lead hardly lasted any time at all before UNC tied the game up in the bottom of the inning. In the twelfth, FAU hit a three-run homer to take an 11-8 lead before UNC tied it up again, only to have the winning run thrown out at home plate with only one out in the inning. UNC finally managed to score the winning run in the 13th, after using most of their entire starting rotation in relief at some point with no regards for pitch counts or basic humanity. It was really crazy to watch.
The point is: I forget what happened in the Pirates game. I remember the following things:
– AJ Burnett serving up a ton of dingers, which ruined my planned post about how he'd pitched really well this year and the Pirates have lost most of his starts, which is something you never hear when people (myself included) get all gloomy and doomy about Jeff Locke and Jeanmar Gomez. This is still mostly true, of course, except that it doesn't apply to this game.
– Andrew McCutchen didn't play, apparently because he's run more miles in the outfield to this point this year than he has last year.
– Russell Martin got thrown out of the game for being slightly flippant about a really terrible strike zone, which lead to Clint Hurdle getting thrown out of the game.
– Mike Zagurski really, legitimately cannot throw a strike.
– Ryan Reid made his big league debut tonight, which is worth noting just because it is.
Really, I think that about covers it.
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