Electric Stuff - Pirates 4 Cardinals 3

Before the game, the talk all around twitter was about Charlie Morton and his #ElectricStuff. The hashtag was started by @fakecharmorton a few days ago and was sent into full force tonight by myself, @rtjr, @whygavs, and several others. We gave Morton quite a name to live up to, and he did just that, going 6 innings allowing only 2 hits and surrendering only 1 run.

The story of the night was Morton keeping the ball on the ground, as we had all already noticed throughout spring training. Morton's sinker was heavy, he got it up into the low to mid 90's and hitters were having major problems hitting it hard. In the game, Mr. Electric stuff faced 25 batters, and induced 15 groundballs, 13 of them being ground outs. The lone run he allowed came off two grounders that weren't hit all that hard that found holes, one down the line for a double and another threw a large hole left by a vacating Neil Walker as he went to cover the base on the hit-and-run. It is very hard for opponents to do a lot of damage when they can't get the ball off the ground, and Morton proved that tonight.

The lone negative side of Morton's performance tonight was the 5 walks. Now it takes 20 balls to total 5 walks, and Morton only threw 40 balls all night (97 pitches). So Morton did a good job of throwing strikes when he wasn't walking those 5 batters. There really wasn't too much negative about this start at all, but if you had to pick something that would be it.

I'm sure we will be talking a lot more about Morton as these next weeks go on, and there's a lot more to talk about in this game. The other big story of the game was Neil Walker and Andrew McCutchen continuing to come up big. With 2 on and 1 out in the 6th, Walker doubled in Cedeno and Tabata, and was then immediately driven in himself on McCutchen's 2nd home run of the year. That was all of the offense that Morton and company would need. The Pirates did have another opportunity to add an insurance run in the 8th, but squandered it as McCutchen bounced into a fielders choice as Tabata was caught trying to take home.

The bullpen came into the game with 3 zeroes to put up. Jose Veras did a good job in the 7th getting his 3 outs thanks to a strikeout and a double play ball, and then things got interesting in the 8th. Evan Meek came in looking to redeem himself from blowing Saturday's game, and he didn't look good. He gave up a single to Colby Rasmus, walked Albert Pujols, and then allowed another hit to Lance Berkman before he was pulled from the game. At the end of the day he was charged with 2 more earned runs. Michael Crotta entered the game and got Allen Craig to hit a double play ball to Ronny Cedeno, who prompty bobbled it and only got one out, and then Crotta struck out David Freese for the 2nd out of the inning.

During the Freese at bat, I tweeted this, saying that I wanted the Pirates to use Hanrahan for a multi-inning save. Clint Hurdle was apparently thinking the same thing, as he brought in his closer for the 4-out save. Hanrahan did his job, striking out Yadier Molina (a very hard thing to do) to end the 8th, then getting 3 straight outs in the 9th for his 3rd save of the year.

I've always been a fan of using your best pitcher whenever you need him most. I'm not at all opposed to letting Meek have the 8th, but I felt that Hanrahan should have been the guy they went to after they saw Meek didn't have it again. I was against letting Crotta, a guy who had faced 3 batters in his major league career, come in in a very high leverage situation. Crotta didn't disappoint us, but in the end Hanrahan was the guy to get it done. I hope Hurdle learns some things from this and uses Hanrahan in the 8th more often. You want your best pitcher in the game when you need outs the most, and that situation is not always in the 9th inning.

Anyways, at the end of the day the Pirates had another very impressive performance and their 2011 record now sits at 3-1 as they try to win their 2nd road series of the year tomorrow as they face the Cardinals again at 8:15. It's James McDonald and Kyle McClellan, liveblog will be on here, so check right here for that.