Pirates Bite It, Fall To Giants In Extra Innings

It was pup night at PNC Park.  Fitting.

But for a few innings it was an enjoyable game.  For a few innings anyway.  Morton had his fourth quality start of 2011, he had six in 2010. It was such a sight to see a Pirates pitcher, the guys we want to win, pitch so well.   It just didn’t happen on this night as the Pirates fell to the Giants 3-2 in ten innings.

Morton used fastballs as it seemed he didn’t have his sinker working entirely. A 17 pitch first inning hurt his odds of getting too deep in the game.   The confidence in the fastball could spell doom for the NL.  Morton allowed four hits in six innings, but walked three.  His ERA at home is just a tick above two and he tied his season high with six strikeouts.  He recorded nine groundball outs, three flyballs and the six k’s.  One of the flyballs was off the bat of Aubrey Huff which tied the game at one.

Matt Cain shut down the Pirates offense which hasn’t been difficult lately.  A Garrett Jones bomb staked the Bucs to a 1-0 lead, get this, it was Jones SECOND HIT at PNC Park this year.  But the Bucs bats and the insistence of having batters give away outs did little to support the great electric stuff of Charlie Morton and his battery mate Ryan Doumit.

Matt Diaz started in left field for Tabata.  He had a knock, a walk, stole a bag and scored the other Pirates run in the bottom of the sixth to give the Bucs a lead.  Overbay, Walker and Doumit each had a hit for the Pirates.

Chris Resop has been amazing.  He inherited two more runners from Morton.  He left them in right where they were when he started.  Resop was helped by two grabs in foul territory by Lyle Overbay.  He picked the second one out of the lap of a Pirates fan.  Resop then got the last out on his own with a twelve pitch strikeout of Mike Fontenot.  Swear to god he threw ten straight four seamers to get the strikeout.

For as good as Resop was, Evan Meek was awful in the eighth.

The game had us shaking our heads, but right around this point the television became target practice.  Mental mistakes and managerial decisions that will be questioned and labored over, but right now it is what it is.  Like stepping in a pile of puppy shit.

It stinks.

Quotes:

Clint Hurdle: Very, very solid.  Very good outing for Charlie.

Charlie Morton: (After the last outing) I moved on.  I watched video and moved on.

Charlie Morton: Resop is unbelieveable.

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What was Freddy Sanchez doing when he tried to bunt?  I watched it ten times.  I am still confused.

As bad as the game was, and it was freaking awful, think of this.  Remember how bad we played last year?  Remember Charlie’s struggles on top of all that poor fielding, hitting, etc?  The Pirates are getting better, especially Morton, well right now, maybe only Morton is actually performing better.  Heh, I tried you miserable bitch.

We will be traveling the next couple of days, gotta make some cash.  Keep me up to date on Twitter please guys.  As always, thanks for some serious support this month.