The Pirates are gunning for their first three-game sweep of the season tonight against the Nationals, but they’ve drawn an awfully difficult task if they’re planning on actually pulling it off. The Nats are sending Stephen Strasburg to the mound tonight, and it seems to me that the Pirates’ lineup is more or less full of sitting ducks for the righty. Strasburg isn’t throwing quite as hard this year as he was in his rookie year, but he’s averaging a strikeout an inning, with just seven walks and two homers allowed over his 38 innings in 2012.
I suppose that the silver lining is that both of the home runs he allowed was in his last start, which has been his only less-than-stellar start of the 2012 season. Still, I’m not getting my hopes up about the Pirates crossing that five-run barrier tonight. The Pirates, meanwhile, will send Kevin Correia to the mound. His last two starts have been pretty bad and if he can’t turn things around, I think it’s going to be time to start talking about taking him out of the rotation if Erik Bedard doesn’t miss much time with his back spasms. That said, the Nats offense has not been very good this year, either, and so if Correia can turn things around against anyone, it’s probably the Nats.
First pitch tonight will be at 7:05.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
