The Starling Marte Show Isn’t Enough, Pirates Fall Again

The crowd of 6,353 at McKechnie Field were certainly thankful for the new tiki bar.  Anything to get them as far away from this game as possible.  The Pirates dropped a dud of a game to the Baltimore Orioles Junior Varisty ball club by a 6-3 score in front of the most people to ever watch (an awful game) at the new McKechnie.

Kyle McPherson got the start and threw some great pitches, but he also threw a few not so great pitches.  The not so great ones were ripped and he allowed three runs in the third inning when his pitch count spiked.   With the game tied up at one, McFear hit Alexi Casilla and then walked Ryan Flaherty putting himself in a rough spot that even all of his karate mastery couldn’t get him out of on this night.

Jason Pridie hit a one-out RBI sinngle, Travis Ishikawa (we are not even sure we are spelling these names right–who the hell are these guys) doubled and then Trayvon Robinson followed with another hit.

The 25-year-old righty saved his worst outing for when the Buccos turned on the lights at McKechnie.  It also sucked that the game was covered by ROOT Sports forcing us to watch it.    The longer the game went the more awful the performance.  Vic Black looked off and allowed a bomb to Lew Ford.

Nothing was more painful than Erik Cordier in the eighth.  We wrote about Cordier and knew it was going to be a Wild Thing Project.  But..oh. my.  That hurt to watch.   The crowd put together Bronx cheer after Bronx cheer.  Just some awful baseball.

The Pirates simply aren’t hitting the baseball consistently.   Six hits on the night.  Two by Starling Marte.  One other hit from Pedro Alvarez that drove in a run–Alvarez simply murdered the ball.

But this night was about Marte who fell behind in counts in every at-bat, but battled back and was able to finish the night 2-for-2 with a walk.  Marte easily stole two bases–and kept on rolling to third base when the throw squirted away in the first inning.  Jose Tabata hit a sacrifice fly to allow the Bucs to tie the game at one.

Marte was also thrown out attempting to steal later in the game.   But there is absolutely no question that Marte can be very dynamic from his leadoff spot.  The disicpline at the plate is coming and it’s easy to see that Marte came into this spring training absolutely read to play.

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About the only other thing enjoyable in this game was watching Ray Searage doing a post game interview while the fireworks were going off.

Jeff Karstens pitched two innings of live batting practice.

GFJ is still on the tream and should swing a bat today.