Just a few days ago, the Cardinals released Miguel Batista and in doing so ensured that Tim Wakefield would take the moudn at PNC Park tonight as the final member of the 1992 Pirates in the majors. That means if the Pirates don’t finish .500 this year, there’s a chance that there will be no one that has ever finished .500 in a Pirate uniform ever the next time the Pirates do it.
I’ve seen a bunch of people worried about facing Wakefield tonight because of the problems the Pirates have had with knuckleballers this year. Honestly, I was feeling the exact opposite about this game. The first time the Pirates saw RA Dickey at the end of May, they had a bunch of trouble with him the first few times through the lineup, but were able to figure things out enough to get a win. They saw Dickey again two weeks later and cut way down on the strikeouts, added some more hits, and beat him again. Wakefield is now the third time they’ve seen a knuckler in the last month, and he hasn’t really been as good as Dickey the last couple years. If the Pirates were ever primed to face a knucker, I’d say it’s tonight.
I am a bit worried about the Jeff Karstens vs. the Red Sox matchup, though. It just seems to me that his brand of slow fastballs and slower curves could be problematic against Adrian Gonzalez and/or David Ortiz. The bullpen had a long night last night and no matter what Karstens does, they’ll probably have a long night tonight. I just have a weird feeling that this game could end up being a pretty high-scoring affair.
First pitch tonight is at 7:05. PNC should be packed again. A Buccos’ win takes the series.
UPDATE: The Bucs announced via their twitter feed that Dusty Brown has been DFA and Eric Fryer will take his place. Fryer’s only been at Triple-A for 21 games, but he’s torn the cover off the ball both in Indy and Altoona this year and though he hasn’t caught much, he’s got a strong defensive reptuation. Like d’Arnaud, I would assume he’s not coming to Pittsburgh to sit.
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