There are actually three stories to talk about from this afternoon’s shellacking of the Astros. The first is the offense. That gets top billing because the Pirates banged out 19 more hits, nine more runs, and for the second straight day looked like a generally competent offensive team. Ronny Cedeno lead the hit parade today with four hits, while Ryan Doumit and Jose Tabata chipped in three apiece, Garrett Jones homered, and for the second game in a row every position player had at least one hit.
The second story is Paul Maholm, who managed to hold the Astros to fewer hits than Ronny Cedeno (this was of course made easier by Cedeno’s four hits; most night’s it’s impossible to do so because teams can’t get -1 hits). Only striking out one hitter over nine innings can be a dicey proposition most of the time, but Maholm kept the Astros off balance the whole game with his slow curve, got a few balls that dropped on the right side of the foul line, and ended up with a 102 pitch complete game that only saw 29 Astros come to the plate.
Finally, we have Andrew McCutchen. He sprained his shoulder making a diving catch in the eighth inning of a 6-0 game. It’s great to have a guy that plays that hard all the time (That’s not sarcasm; he could’ve let that ball bounce in front of him for a single, but he didn’t. And who can blame him with the way things have gone lately?), but seeing him in pain after the awkward landing was awfully scary. The word is that it’s an AC-joint sprain and it doesn’t sound bad, but that doesn’t make it less scary. With everything that’s gone wrong this year, having McCutchen miss serious time would be about the worst thing possible.
But since it seems like he’s OK, that means it’s safe to bask in the glow of another home series win and 21 runs in two games. After the first 89 games, this feels nice.
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