Here’s something I didn’t think I’d be typing in the first half (or maybe at all) of this season: this could have been a third straight really frustrating game for the Pirates, if not for the fantastic start by Charlie Morton. If you just looked at the scoreboard, it’d seem like the Pirates struggled with Kyle Lohse tonight, but that wouldn’t be the full story. The Pirates dinged Lohse for 10 hits in his 6 1/3 innings, but they only scored the two runs. That happened because they stranded a bunch of runners on base, and because they had three runners thrown out on the base paths in the game’s first four innings.
Of course, none of that mattered because of Charlie Morton. Morton didn’t allow a hit until the fourth inning, and he held the Brewers to three in 7 1/3. He walked three hitters, but he walked one in the first, one in the seventh, and one in the eighth. In between then, he was dominant. He struck out six and induced nine other groundouts. When he got into trouble in the eighth, Tony Watson came in and induced a double play within two pitches. In the ninth, Mark Melancon got three groundouts in seven pitches.
Morton actually doubled his season strikeout total tonight, and it’s nice to see him continue to round into shape the more he pitches. As I mentioned before his first start, he’s been an excellent pitcher on and off for the Pirates for the last five years. Usually, his excellent stretches are correlated with periods in which he’s healthy. It’s easy to see what a difference a healthy Morton makes to this rotation. Before he came back, a bad start by Cole or Burnett or Liriano felt devastating, because both Worley and Locke were so unreliable at the end of the rotation. Here, he’s shored up a two game losing streak in which the Pirates lost games started by Burnett and Liriano and he was able to overcome an offense that’s having a down week. His strong start tonight means that if the Pirates can find a way to win with Jeff Locke on the mound on Friday, they’ll turn a two-game winning streak over to Cole and Burnett against the Phillies on Saturday and Sunday. Obviously the games have to be played, but you can see how the potential to quickly turn around that short losing streak exists, and it’s there in part because of how good Morton was tonight.
In any case, Morton was excellent, Gregory Polanco made a run happen with his bat and legs in the first, Pedro Alvarez crushed a long home run in the second, and the Pirates avoided the ignominy of a sweep at the hands of the Brewers. This homestand isn’t quite a disaster just yet.
Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
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