The Pirates Dreaded Eighth Inning: A Season Long Problem

The eighth inning came back to haunt the Pittsburgh Pirates again last night.  The Pirates have been outscored 62-37 this season in the eighth inning of games.

The eighth inning fiasco continued last night.  It didn’t look like it needed to be all of that, perhaps some overmanaging ?  Anyway if you missed it, Jesse Chavez struck out the side in the seventh. 

He got the first out in the eighth.  JR went to Joel Hanrahan.  Sigh.

Hanrahan had gotten Ryan Roberts easily in the opener Monday night.  He walked the neck-inked one last night.  Then got a comebacker to the mound.

He speared it.  A double play ball looked to get the Bucs into the ninth.  We were on our feet….

But…

Hanrahan threw a one hopper to Cedeno.  It all went downhill from there.

A few observations to close it out tonight for Rumbunter:

JHammer dropped a perfect throw from Lastings Milledge as the Snakes grabbed the lead.

Then later in the eighth inning,  Andy LaRoche cut off a Jeff Salazer throw that looked to me to be dead on which could have kept the DBacks at three runs.  LaRoche did get the sure final out between second and first to end the inning.  It cost us the fourth run.  Big, big run…especially when Garrett Freaking Jones hit his 11th home run in the bottom of the ninth.  Final score New Bucs 3, Snakes 4.

Ross Ohlendorf on the bump tonight. Ohlendorf had a solid start this evening. His slider was good tonight. An eight fly ball to eight ground ball ratio. Did he get squeezed? Pitch FX sure does look like it which led to some of those five walks.

Ohlendorf hit 95 on the gun.  He threw 57 fastballs according to PitchFXstats.

LaRoche hit a 410 bomb.

Andrew McCutchen was given the night off after the tag in the face at first base last night. McCutchen went 3 for 16 (.188) with five strikeouts and no homers in Pittsburgh’s series with Arizona last month.