Obviously some big news after the game ended, but let’s do the recap first.
Brad Lincoln got hit really hard tonight. He was in trouble in just about every inning, walked three batters, hit two, and gave up three doubles. He was not fun at all to watch tonight.
As for the rest of the game, the Pirates managed to group seven hits among Neil Walker, Andrew McCutchen, Garrett Jones, and Ryan Doumit and that accounted for their four runs, but they only had two hits from every other spot in the lineup combined and both came from the nine spot (Brad Lincoln and Aki Iwamura). Having Ryan Church in the lineup was, to the surprise of no one except possibly John Russell, an epically bad idea as he went 0/4 behind all of the guys that got on base. Andy LaRoche is lost at the plate. There’s not a first baseman on the team that can catch a damn ball.
At least Andrew McCutchen has broken out of the slump he was in last week. He singled three times and stole three bases and that helped him score twice. And Neil Walker was settling into his first funk of the season, but also broke out of it nicely with a beautiful bunt single and a nice double. And while Jose Tabata put up the first ofer of his first big league career, he covered a crazy amount of ground in left field tonight and worked a great nine-pitch walk in the sixth inning after Aki Iwamura’s pinch-hit double that unfortunately didn’t amount to anything. These three continue to be worth watching, even if the Pirates aren’t winning.
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