The offense was not led by any single player. Seven different players had 2 hits. Seven. I would love to know the last time the Pirates did that. (Edit: The Pirates actually did it last year on July 21st against the Brewers, go figure.) Jose Tabata, Matt Diaz, Neil Walker, Steven Pearce, Lyle Overbay, Chris Snyder, and Ronny Cedeno all had 2 hits. Andrew McCutchen added a hit of his own and 2 RBI. None of the Pirates 15 hits were home runs, and only 3 of them went for extra bases. The Pirates hit .385 as a team in this game. Before these last two games, we were talking about how the Pirates offense really hadn't broken out for a bunch of runs yet this year, but they've done just that the last 2 games. The Pirates averaged 11 hits and 6 runs a game in this series against the Reds, and drew an impressive 6 walks per game.
An equally impressive performance was put together by Kevin Correia on the hill. He pitched all 9 innings, notching the Pirates second complete game of the season (they had 1 all of last year). Correia allowed only 4 hits and 2 earned runs, both of those runs coming in the 9th inning on a home run served up to Chris Heisey. Correia was on cruise control throughout most of this game, walking only 2 batters and striking out 5 against one of the top offenses in the league. He now has a 2.48 ERA this year and been more than worth every penny the Pirates gave him this offseason.
It's performances like tonight that really make you optimistic as a Pirates fan. Anytime you have a pitcher that is performing like Correia has been on the mound, you have a fantastic chance to win any game you play. The Pirates have 2 extremely hot pitchers in Correia and Charlie Morton, who will pitch Wednesday, and they've gotten some very good innings from Paul Maholm as well. Ross Ohlendorf is on his way back and we'll hope we can get some good starts out of him, and James McDonald is too good of a pitcher to continue his early season struggles for very long.
The offense has done all of this good work while getting no production from Pedro Alvarez, arguably their best power bat. I wrote a post about Alvarez last night, so read that for more on his slow start. The hot starts that Tabata, Walker, and Snyder have had to this season have been extremely vital, and it really seems that Overbay and McCutchen are starting to turn it on. This offense could make these kinds of outbursts commonplace, which could certainly win the Pirates a good amount of games this year if the pitching can keep up anywhere near what they've been doing this year.
The offense is batting .267 this year and the pitching staff has an ERA of 3.86, both pretty solid numbers. 8-8 is a good spot for the Pirates and I don't see any reason they can't keep up the hot streak and win another road series in Miami this week. Here's the updated numbers:
