The Dodgers defeated the Pirates 10-2 today, and boy was it ugly. Neither team played particularly well, it was just a matter of who played worse. The Dodgers did well at the plate, capitalizing on almost every Pirate pitching mistake. They collected 16 hits, 6 of which came in one inning off of Pirates pitcher Hayden Penn. Penn looked straight awful, serving up meat ball after meat ball and getting absolutely hammered over and over again. He had the same 6 H, 4 ER line as Paul Maholm did, only in 5 less innings.
Maholm did not pitch all that terribly, he gave up one run in the first, another in the third, and then 2 in the 5th. The two early runs were both the result of some great Dodger hitting. Ronnie Belliard had a huge day at the plate, with the highlight being his 2-run homer in the fifth on a ball that nobody would ever expect him to hit out of the ballpark. He also added 2 more hits in other parts of the game and came up a single short of the cycle. Maholm did make some really good pitches today and I look at it as a positive start.
There wasn't much going on with the offense. Chad Billingsley was on his game for Los Angeles, going 5.1 innings and giving up 1 earned run on 5 hits. He also struck out 7. The Pirates did have their share of chances during the game, but couldn't capitalize. The biggest chance they had was when the bases were loaded for Andy LaRoche with only 1 out. LaRoche got into a deep count, and then struck out looking. With the pitcher up behind you and only one out, I don't see any excuse for not swinging the bat on a borderline pitch with 2 strikes on you. That was a huge mistake and cost the Pirates a lot of potential momentum at that point in the ballgame. After his strike out, Paul Maholm also was caught looking and the threat ended. Andy did get hit first hit of the year later in the game, on a hard hit line drive into left field. Iwamura also notched his first hit of the year, and now every Pirates regular has at least one hit.
It was just a really ugly ball game altogether. The Pirates recorded 3 fielding errors, 2 of which were attributed to Bobby Crosby. Also, Garrett Jones made one of the ugliest errors you will ever see a big league player make, having an easy ground ball pop right out of his glove.
On a positive note, Jeff Clement got his first Pirate RBI in the 6th when he hit a sacrifice fly to score Delwyn Young, who had a nice day at the plate with 2 doubles and 2 walks drawn. Delwyn has been smoking the ball all year and it is too bad we have no where for him to play.
The Bucs hit the road for the first time in 2010 as they head to Arizona for a 3 game set with the Diamondbacks, starting tomorrow at 9:30. The matchup is Charlie Morton against Rodrigo Lopez, it'll be very interesting to see how Morton performs in his first start of 2010. Until then...
Let's Go Bucs!
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