When this game started, it was about everything that’s gone wrong for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the last few seasons. Paul Maholm and Zach Duke are nice guys and I don’t think that either one is as bad of a pitcher as people tend to think thanks to some awful Pirate defenses and lack of run support, but it’s ridiculous that PNC Park is 10 years old and the two of them are tied for the park’s all-time wins lead at 31 (standard “wins are a stupid stat” caveat applies, but the statement still stands). The end of the game, though, was all about the club’s future; after a game full of runners left on base and a bullpen that flirted with disaster almost all night, Andrew McCutchen took things into his own hands and wrapped a walkoff homer around the left field foul pole to put the Pirates at 30-30 through the first 60 games of the 2011 season.
So much happened in this one it feels like two or three separate games. The Pirates dinged Zach Duke for 9 hits in his seven innings of work and only struck out once, but because of some bad baserunning and the inability to string hits together, they only scored once off of him. Paul Maholm was excellent and it seemed for a while like maybe Andrew McCutchen’s third inning single was going to be enough, but Clint Hurdle pulled Maholm after 94 pitches and six innings, likely thinking about how quickly Maholm ran out of gas against the Mets last week.
Because of the early hook, Hurdle ended up going down a rabbit hole that saw a pretty shaky night from everyone in the bullpen not named Chris Resop, Tony Watson, and Joel Hanrahan, who didn’t even combine for three innings of the six the bullpen threw tonight. He had to use Chris Resop in the seventh, wihch left the recently shaky Jose Veras for the eighth. Veras gave the lead back within three batters. Clint Hurdle decided at that point that it was a good place for Tony Watson’s Major League debut, and so Watson was faced with Chris Young and Juan Miranda with two runners on and one out in the eighth inning of a tie game. He responded with two strikeouts, which is about the best way I can think of for reliever to start his career. Hanrahan had a typically dominating ninth, setting the D’Backs down on 11 pitches, but that was all he got. Danny Moskos came in to give up the first earned run of his career in the tenth, but was bailed out by McCutchen’s ground rule double and Neil Walker’s subsequent game-tying single. Dan McCutchen finished things off with a two inning tightrope act that was aided greatly by Lyle Overbay starting a nifty double play in the eleventh.
I have no idea what would’ve happened if McCutchen hadn’t homered when he did. Pedro Ciriaco was the only bench player left and he probably would’ve been used to pinch-hit for Dan McCutchen, who was due up after Neil Walker. Evan Meek, who’s been shaky since coming off of the DL and threw 1 2/3 innings last night, was the only reliever left in the bullpen. The hypothetical doesn’t matter, though, because the Pirates’ best player stepped up exactly when the team needed him to.
I know I keep saying that I don’t care if the Pirates get to .500 in May or June or July or August, but I do care that they win games like this one. Every Pirate fan everywhere is going to bed with a big smile tonight.
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