Game 94: Pirates 2 Reds 0

When the Pirates brough Charlie Morton out for the first inning, he got himself into a jam, and then the Pittsburgh skies filled with the wrong kind of electricity, I was worried. “Why even start this game if another storm was coming?” I wondered. I figured that either Morton was done on the spot or that he’d come back out rusty two hours later and lay an egg. 

Instead, Morton came out around 9:30, got a bouncer from Miguel Cairo and some nice glove work from Chase d’Arnaud to escape the jam he’d made for himself in the first, and he pretty much cruised through four more innings from there. And then Tony Watson came in and set down eight batters in a row and when he got into a jam after a phantom catcher’s interference call, Dan McCutchen came in and closed the door on the Reds in the eighth. And then Joel Hanrahan came in and showed no ill-effects from yesterday’s blown save and the Pirates shut out the Reds, the National League’s best offense, with Charlie Morton, Tony Watson, Dan McCutchen, and Joel Hanrahan. 

It was a good thing they did, too, because as much as I poked fun at Dontrelle Willis before the game, he really didn’t look too bad tonight. He had his fastball up in the low 90s and he didn’t seem to have the control problems that plagued him so much in Detroit. The delay had to affect him almost as much as it did Morton, since he took the mound almost 2 1/2 hours after the game was initially scheduled to start. The Pirates managed to ding him for two in the fourth thanks to back to back hits from Chase d’Arnaud and Neil Walker and then some aggressive baserunning from d’Arnaud. That was all the pitching staff needed tonight. 

Thanks to the Brewers 3-0 loss to the Diamondbacks, the Pirates have a half-game lead on the Brewers and Cardinals and are in first place by themselves in the National League Central. The Pirates have not been in first place this late in a season since 1992. This game featured a hug between Dan McCutchen and Mike McKenry after a huge out in the eighth inning. Somehow, these two things are related. I can’t wrap my brain around it right now, but I don’t need to understand it to enjoy it.