Pittsburgh Pirates Takeaways & Throwaways – Locke Outduels Bumgarner

The Pittsburgh Pirates recovered from an awful weekend in Chicago by taking the first game of the series against San Francisco with a 1-0 on Monday. Here are the takeaways and throwaways from the game.

Takeaways

• In a game where the Pirates needed it most, the good Jeff Locke showed up on Monday. He was great is his six and two thirds innings of work on Monday, limiting a hot hitting San Francisco club to just five hits. He also did not walk anyone and struck out three. The fanbase has seen this type of performance from Locke knows he is capable of having an outing the complete opposite of this. But hopefully he’ll build off of this and string together a few quality starts.
• Erik Kratz collected his first hit in his second stint as a Pirates, a decisive solo home run in the fifth inning. A lot of injuries have led to Kratz being on the Pirates, and while no one is expecting him to hit like Francisco Cervelli, the home run was a nice surprise. But he’ll need to build off this to gain the trust of management and the fans.

Throwaways

• The only real negative from Monday’s game was the number of players who went hitless. Granted, they were facing Madison Bumgarner, but the two through six hitters went a combined zero for fifteen with just one walk. The Pirates were able to squeak out a win because of a home run from a very unlucky source, but the big hitters will need to get it going as the series moves on.

W – Jeff Locke (6-5)

L – Madison Bumgarner (8-3)

S – Mark Melancon (20)

Line of the Night

Tonight we’ll focus on Locke, as surprising as that is given his last few outings.

Locke gave Clint Hurdle a very good start on Monday, going into the seventh inning and allowed just five hits to go along with three strikeouts. More impressively, he threw 62 of his 84 pitches for strikes. As mentioned above, hopefully Locke can use this start to string together a few more outings. With the rotation poorly well below what was expected of them, a few good starts could give Locke a leg up on keeping his rotation spot moving forward.

Up Next

The series continues on Tuesday at 7:05pm when Johnny Cueto (10-1, 2.10) takes the hill for the Giants against a yet to be announced starter for the Pirates. As can be seen by his record, Cueto has been outstanding in his first season, putting together eight quality starts in a row. While the Pirates have not announced the starter for Tuesday’s game, chances are that Wilfredo Boscan will get the ball. In his limited time with the big club, Boscan has a 2.92 ERA in 12.1 innings of work. He does sport an ugly 5/6 BB/K ratio in those innings, and he’ll need to limit the baserunners against a tough San Francisco club.