There’s a good chance this game gets rained out (I mean, Pittsburgh in April, amiright? [It’s 85 and sunny in Chapel Hill]), but if it doesn’t, James McDonald and Madison Bumgarner will pitch in front of a microcrowd while most of Pittsburgh watches the Penguins.
I still can’t find a ton of evidence that McDonald’s doing something hugely different from last year. As a flyball pitcher, he was always going to give up more homers than he allowed in his brief stint with the Pirates last year, but at the same time his 18.5% HR/FB rate this year is too high and as that evens out, I’m pretty sure his case of Grand Slam Fever will abate. He’s still going to his fastball more regularly than he did last year and that’s something that will hopefully stop as the season goes on, but I’m guessing that as long as it’s cold and rainy in Pittsburgh he’ll keep going to the four-seamer a little more regularly. Like Charlie Morton, he’ll be more effective when he starts mixing his curve and changeup in a bit more. It would be great to see a good start from him, if only to stop some of those lingering doubts from creeping in.
Bumgarner hasn’t been all that great this year; he’s not getting ground balls, he’s not missing bats, and he’s walking a bunch of hitters. If the Bucs have some patience, I think they could have some success against him tonight. That or he’ll magically find himself against a Pirate offense that hasn’t scared much of anyone this year.
Of course, at this point my confidence that Clint Hurdle will avoid negatively meddling with any close game after the fifth inning is pretty much zero and in that regard, I’m happy that I won’t be able to see much (or any) of this game tonight due to a lab dinner, if only to keep my head from exploding out of pure, unadulterated rage when Hurdle decides to try a suicide squeeze down by one run with Chris Snyder up, Pedro Alvarez on third, the infield in, and no outs. I shouldn’t have even typed that, because when I joke like that, Hurdle tends does something even dumber. I bet he thought it was a good idea to replace wookies with ewoks in Return of the Jedi.
First pitch tonight is purportedly at 7:05.
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