In our daily Wake-Up Call, we get you ready for the day with a complete look at all things Pittsburgh Pirates.
On ESPN last night, the Pirates defeated the Dodgers 4-3 and will now be going for the four-game sweep this afternoon. Francisco Liriano will take the hill in the 12:35 start as we continuously hope this will finally be the outing where he shows signs of improvement. If they do win today, the Pirates will move to within one game of .500 and potentially three games of the second Wild Card spot.
Last night was special for a number of reasons. For one, Chad Kuhl got a win in his major league debut and got the start that the Pirates needed. No he wasn’t dominant or flashy, but he gave the Pirates five innings of decent work, which is more than they can say for most of their starters for the majority of this season. With the way the offense has performed this year, all the team’s really needed has been decent starting pitching, but they haven’t even been able to get that most of the time. It was nice to see that Kuhl could deliver in that regard.
It was also great to see the Pirates get to Clayton Kershaw. The Pirates have Kershaw’s number. They may get dominated by Jake Arrieta, but the fact that they can get to arguably the bets pitcher of our generation is a positive. Chris Stewart does nothing but rake against Kershaw, and he ended up suffering just his second loss of the season. It was a tall order to hope Kuhl pitched well and Kershaw didn’t heading into last night, but it happened.
I was hoping that Saturday night was the start of the turn-around for Andrew McCutchen, but he just went 0-4 and was ejected last night. When he had a three-home run game earlier this year I was hoping the same thing, but it didn’t happen either. At some point should we just accept that it might be a down year for Cutch?
The Pirates have obviously not fared well during the toughest part of their schedule this month. They’ve played playoff contenders night-in and night-out, and it doesn’t get any easier heading into the All-Star break. They do play the A’s for a series, but they also play the Mariners, Cardinals, and Cubs, all tough teams. If they can be above .500 by the break, that would be a huge plus.
Pittsburgh Pirates Player of the Game
The #Pirates defeat the #Dodgers 4-3 in Chad Kuhl's major league debut. Who was your Player of the Game tonight?
— Jason Rollison (@jrollisonpgh) June 27, 2016
Baseball Talk from Around the Web
- Make sure to check out this week’s edition of Baseball Blogs Weigh In via MLB Trade Rumors, where we have one of our articles on Adam Frazier featured!
- The Reds retired Pete Rose‘s number before Sunday’s game against the Padres. It was part of a weekend full of festivities.
- Jake Arrieta lost a College World Series bet to his teammate Tommy La Stella, so he will now have to get a tattoo of CCU (Coastal Carolina University), the same school that La Stella attended and beat TCU in the CWS, the school Arrieta attended. Nice.
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