Through 3 1/2 innings, the Pirates were beating the Rangers 2-0, hitting the ball squarely a lot, and Ross Ohlendorf hadn’t allowed a base runner.
“Hmm,” I said to myself. “This is too good to be true.”
Then Ohlendorf fell apart in the fifth, Tony Beasley and Ryan Doumit combined to run the Pirates out of a run in the sixth, and the bullpen couldn’t hold the line (which is no easy task when they come in in the fifth, of course). The Pirates ended up out-hitting the Rangers 10-7 tonight, but the Bucs drew no walks and handed Texas six free passes. Meanwhile, they struck out nine times but Pirate pitchers whiffed just two Ranger hitters.
It seems to me that if you knew that one team had a 9:0 K:BB ratio and the other had a 2:6 ratio, you could pick the winner out pretty easily without knowing much else about the game. It certainly would be true for this one.
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