Last night’s win was as “feel good” as they come thanks to the late comeback and the big contribution from Josh Harrison in his Major League debut. A win tonight could keep that tide going for a second straight night, as the Pirates now have a chance to match their entire 2010 road win total (17) in 50 games fewer than it took to reach the plateau last year. Obviously it’d be hard to ever be as bad as the 2010 Pirates were on the road again, but this sort of dramatic turnaround wasn’t something I expected, either.
Josh Harrison’s solid debut last night earned him a second straight start and Kevin Correia goes for the Bucs against Chris Capuano, who continues to surprise me with his presence in baseball. His strikeout/walk rate actually looks pretty good, despite his high ERA, though he is giving up a bunch of hits and homers this season. The Pirates managed to hit him pretty well after his return last year, so hopefully they’ll have more of the same type success tonight.
Correia, meanwhile, will try to keep his low ERA and high win total going despite his microscopic strikeout rate. There’s no doubt he’s pitching well; his walk rate and groundball rate both look very good and those are two things that gave him problems at times in San Diego. Still, I’d love to see him go out and rack up some strikeouts to move that K-rate upwards a bit, which would go a ways towards convincing me that he can keep up his torrid early-season pace. Even if he doesn’t tonight, CitiField shouldn’t be too harsh on him. First pitch tonight is at 7:10
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