Starting With A Bang

It was a great day to be a Pirate fan. It was an even better day to be a Pirate fan at PNC Park.

It was a great baseball environment today. It was a sellout crowd and everyone was excited to see their Pirates back in action. If you're reading this blog, you almost surely already know the outcome and a lot of the main details of the game. If not, you can check out the box score here. For now, I'm just gonna point out a couple of things that I noticed today.

• First one's obvious, Garrett Jones is a monster. The second the ball left his bat in the first inning everyone in the stadium knew it was gone, the only question was how long it would fly. The result was a 456 foot bomb that bounced and rolled into the Allegheny River. His second homer was pretty much the opposite. When it came off the bat I personally thought it was a routine fly out. I thought that for awhile until I saw Manny keep retreating... and retreating. The ball sneaked into the first row of the bleachers right near the foul poll. The crowd erupted when we all figured out that it was gone.


• Number two is about Jeff Clement. Nothing in the box score would impress you, but I was very pleased with his performance today. His first at bat he singled to right field; a very nice piece of hitting. It is crucial for a guy like Clement to learn how to hit to the opposite field. I was worried that he would be looking to kill every ball to impress everyone and feel like he belongs on the team, which in turn would probably make him try to pull everything and lead to a lot of weak contact. However, Clement looked very patient at the plate today and was able to drive the ball in his first at bat to right field. He exhibited a lot of patience in his other at bats too, working the count to full and striking out looking on a borderline pitch that he should have swung at. He drew a walk in his 3rd at bat and reached on an error in his 4th at bat, a ball he struck pretty well. Defensively he was flawless, making a nice stab on a hard liner hit by Andre Ethier in the 3rd inning.


• The third thing involves Akinori Iwamura. In the box score all you will see is that he was 0/4 with a walk, however he played a lot better than that. Iwamura exhibited extraordinary plate patience today. He saw 5 pitches in his first at bat, 7 in his second, 7 in his third, 7 in his fourth, and 4 in his fifth. That's 6 pitches seen per at bat, pretty impressive stuff. If he keeps that up, he's gonna find himself on base a whole bunch this year.


• The fourth and final thing deals with the bullpen. They didn't fair too well in their debut, but they weren't terrible either. The combination of Jack Taschner, DJ Carrasco, Evan Meek, Brendan Donnelly, and Octavio Dotel gave up 3 runs in their 4 innings, all of which were tagged on Carrasco, but Evan Meek didn't do his job either. They gave up 5 hits and walked only 1 in those 4 innings, so again, not too terrible but not great either. Together they threw 63 pitches, 40 of which were thrown for strikes. That's a pretty decent number. All-in-all I was only really pleased with Taschner and Dotel. Donnelly looked pretty good as well, but threw a couple of bad pitches that were hit hard.

Duke pitched pretty well, he had a tough first inning but bounced back pretty nicely. He only got 5 innings of work and 79 pitches, probably just because Russell wants to ease his pitchers into the season. Also the fact that Duke was coming to the plate with the bases loaded and 2 outs in the 5th factored in. Ryan Church pinch hit for him in that 5th inning and capitalized and had a very impressive Pirates debut with a base clearing 3 run double. When all said and done, it was an extremely impressive team effort from the Pirates. It's not very often you walk out of PNC Park hearing people cheering "Let's Go Bucs!", but it happened today, and it was awesome.

The Buccos are off tomorrow and then are back in action Wednesday night. It's Ross Ohlendorf against Clayton Kershaw and tickets are only a dollar. Until next time! Let's go Bucs!