Let’s start with the good, shall we? After a decent first start, Kevin Correia was excellent today in shutting out the Cardinals over seven innings. He held the Cards to five hits. He didn’t get a lot of strikeouts (just three) and his GB/FB ratio was about even (9/10 today), but from what I could tell on the radio broadcast the Cards just never really hit the ball well except for Colby Rasmus’s near-homer. Some props should go to the defense as well, just because thus far they’ve allowed the Pirates’ pitching staff to have some good outings despite not racking up huge K totals. There have been some high profile blunders, but I think that on the whole the team defense has been more solid to begin this year than it was last year and I’m interested to see what the advanced numbers look like when they come out.
The offense also did a decent job against Carpenter, I thought. They didn’t draw any walks, but Neil Walker’s homer came after a good at-bat when he fouled off some cutters and curves to get a sinker to hit. They also cut down on the strikeouts a bit, with the only K from the first five hitters coming from Jose Tabata. Alvarez had a couple hits, McCutchen is staying hot, and Overbay’s driving the ball. I feel like at some point this club is due to explode on some back-end starter for about eight runs in a game, because there’s definitely plenty of hitting in games like this one without many runs. Also, Evan Meek finally had a strong outing again, getting an easy 1-2-3 eighth.
On the downside, Ryan Doumit bunted Pedro Alvarez to third with no outs in the eighth inning and a two-run lead. That’s just insane and dumb and frustrating and pointless. And the downside to Correia’s start is that I do think that eventually these low strikeout totals are going to start turning into more runs for the other team.
But for today, the Pirates are 4-2 on the road to open 2011. They’ve won back-to-back road series and their biggest question mark, their starting pitching, has been excellent thus far in 2011. After last year, it just doesn’t feel right to complain about much of anything at this point.
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