If you asked me this morning to describe the worst possible outcome for the home opener, I would’ve said “The Pirates playing a game indistinguishable from the 2010 Pirates.” An awful first inning error, a squandered opportunity in the bottom of the first, and a slow bleed from close game to blowout while a mostly unknown pitcher dominates the Pirates is pretty much the 2010 Pirates to a “T.” Knowing that it’s the home opener and that there are plenty of people on a one-day bandwagon and that there are plenty of people waiting to dismiss this team as “Same Old Pirates” at the first opportunity, well, it’s hard to watch or listen or follow along with a game like this one.
This is the sort of game I was talking about when I wrote the “Build a wall around it” post; sometimes young teams are going to struggle and today was one of those days. It absolutely sucks that it came in the home opener and that the second largest crowd in PNC history watched Esmil Rogers flat-out dominate the Pirates, but it happened. I did my best to not get too excited by six mostly good games, so I’m damn well not going to get horribly bent out of shape over one bad one.
The good thing about opening the home schedule in the middle of the week is that the Pirates get two more chances to play in front of big early season crowds on Friday and Saturday night. Today’s game was bad, so build a wall around it, go out, and try to play better tomorrow. It’s either that, or wallow in one ugly game.
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