Red Sox Bringing Light Lineup at Pirates Today

The Boston Red Sox make the trip to McKechnie today to take on the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Pedro Ciriaco is back!

Ciriaco 2B
Iglesias SS
Youkilis 3B
Gonzalez 1B
Saltalamacchia C
Lavarnway DH
Kroeger RF
Repko CF
Hassan LF
Lester P
Also on the Red Sox schedule: Junichi Tazawa, Franklin Morales and Doug Mathis

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Catching a glimpse of the game on Tivo last night, the Bucs had a chance to blow out Michael Pineda. But they didn’t. They extended his pitch count especially in the first, but then the pitching coach saw the shoulder opening up and had the righty make the adjustment.

But what concerned us is that as the game progressed into the second and third innings, the strikeouts started to pile up as they did last season. It’s something to keep an eye on moving forward.

Here are the notes we quickly took on the Bucs facing Pineda. We didn’t get a chance to write anything up seriously.

Presley. Six pitches.
Tabata. Seven pitches. Full count. Hits the Pineda slider the other way for a single into right field.
McCutchen. Nine pitches. Pineda hung breaking ball in the middle of the plate on a full count. Bye. Bye. BOMB. 2-0 BUCN.
Walker. On the sixth pitch Walk rips a single into RF.
Jones. 3-1 Walker thrown out. Then on 34th pitch GFJ walked.
Barajas. 2-1 pitch unleashed a rip that went foul and on 39th pitch he popped out to first.

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Bedard got a double play ball to get him out of trouble early.

He then walked A-Rod on a 3-1 curveball that stayed high.

Yankees would leave two men on as Tex grounded out to Clint Barmes.

In the 2nd, Pineda struckout the side.  Frustrating to watch.
Pedro got to 3-1 and looked like he got ball four, but didn’t, according to home plate ump. Pedro then chased a 92 mph fastball high out of the zone.

Barmes struck out. Bedard struck out looking on Pineda’s 53 rd pitch. .

Bottom 2nd

Bedard got two nice strikeouts. The lefty’s breaking ball looked sharper the more he threw.

3rd inning
Presley grounded out to second. Tabata struckout looking after battling Pineda with a few foul balls. Pineda then struckout Cutch looking after the Bucs CF worked the Yankees right hander to a full count and fouled off numerous pitches.

Pineda would get chased after throwing 72 pitches and striking out four Bucs in three innings.

Bot third
Gardner had a bunt single to lead off the third inning. A sharp single was smoked past Jones by Cano putting Yanks on first and third with nobody out.

Bedard got ahead of Nick Swisher no balls and two strikes (as he did in the first inning but Swisher worked a walk). Swisher hit the ball to Pedro who booted it on the in-between hop and Gardner scored. Swisher left the game with his lack of groin problem.

Cano ripped a ball to Jones who fired offline to the outfield side of second, but Barmes was able to snare it for the first out.

Runners were on the corner when ARod muscled a nice Bedard pitch for an RBI bloop single.

Tex flew out and Andruw Jones struckout looking on a Bedard hook.

Mariana Rivera? Walk. Foul foul. Backdoor cutter for the K of Walk.
GFJ broken bat on cutter flew out to 1B. Barajas popped out to ARod. Rivera threw 9 pitches, his first seven were strikes.