Pirates Gerrit Cole, Shark Tank, Take Care of Friars

May 29, 2014; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Gerrit Cole (45) in the sixth inning of the game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

Gerrit Cole was lauded by the San Diego Padres announcers as we drove five hours last night and listened on XM. It was fun to listen to an outsider perspective on the Bucs right hander, but they freaked me out in the sixth inning. Cole had thrown a 91 mile an hour fastball, well according to them at least, and catcher Russell Martin came out to speak to the Bucs ace.

We should have known it wasn’t, after all they also said Jose Tabata was the team leader in home runs.

But again, Cole couldn’t get deep into a game that he was dominating and the Padres turned a one-hit shutout with two outs into the sixth inning into a little something more and my heart started to race a little bit….just what would the Pirates staff be without…well everyone on twitter cleared the air and all was right in the world once again.

The two-run home run by Neil Walker got the Buccos on the board and the San Diego announcers were amazed that Hometown got that pitch out of Petco. For Walker it was his eleventh of the season. Pedro Alvarez followed with a two run blast of his own and it certainly sounded like there was no question it was out of the yard. Both blasts were off rookie Jesse Hahn who was piling up some strikeouts against the Bucs before Walker broke the ice.

Cole kept pumping first pitch strikes, but got a little deep in counts too often and the efficiency the Pirates needed was gone, but the bullpen picked up the slack once again. The right hander had only allowed a Will Venable double before he got into the jam in the sixth inning. The Friars had three straight hits on five pitches to chase Cole—I was freaking out while all this happened of course. Clint Hurdle went to Jared Hughes after getting 100 pitches out of his ace. Hughes did what he has been doing so consistently lately and got a groundball to end the threat.

Then the Ice Man Tony Watson took care of business in seventh, check out the new shirt Zack created and is now available at Center Field Smoke too!

Mark Melancon and Jason Grilli finished off the work and oh yeh, no hits were allowed by the Shark Tank.

The Pirates go for the sweep tomorrow with Francisco Liriano on the bump. The best line of the night about Frankie pitching—“it just doesn’t get any easier–the Padres will see the Bucs three best starters.” We got a chuckle out of that as we raced as fast as Cole was firing fastballs through the nations capital.

What did we do before Sirius XM radio?