First of all, it would be unfair to say anything about the game before I throw in my two cents about Charlie Morton. One of the best Pirates pitching performances we have seen in a long time. Morton went the distance, giving up only 1 run on 5 hits. He got 15 ground ball outs and there was seriously less than 5 balls hit hard tonight. One of those hard hit balls went over the fence off the bat of Jay Bruce in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs, what a jerk. Morton continues to be absolutely remarkable. He has an ERA of 1.64 and has matched his win total from last year. It should be a heck of a lot of fun watching Morton for the rest of the year.
In addition to the hugeness of Morton's performance, the offense bust out. The Pirates collected 15 hits despite some terrible playing conditions for most of the game. Jose Tabata had a monster game with 4 hits ad raised his batting average to .354, Chris Snyder added 3 hits, and Lyle Overbay and Garrett Jones both chipped in 2. Andrew McCutchen had a miserable game at the plate, going 0/5 with 4 strikeouts, but that was basically the only negative side. The Pirates haven't had a game where they put up runs in bunches yet this year, and tonight was certainly a huge game for them. They scored all 6 of their runs in innings 2 through 4, but were quiet after that. It was good to see the Pirates jump out to a big lead. They hadn't led by more than 2 runs all year, this was truly the first dominating performance of the year for the Buccos.
Let me also say that I do not attribute this offensive outburst to the order of the lineup. Hurdle switched things up tonight, batting McCutchen first, Tabata second, Overbay third, and Walker fourth. A lot of people are giving Hurdle a lot of credit for switching things around after a couple really ugly offensive games. I don't see how switching the lineup could make any real difference. The offensive improvement was sheerly coincidental, if you're asking me. If the Pirates run the same lineup out as they have been tonight, they still would have scored the runs and won this game. The lineup really doesn't make a difference, and I will stand by my belief that Tabata should lead off and McCutchen should hit 3rd.
I also really believe that this offense will be improved a ton once Pedro Alvarez gets it going. Now that's an obvious thing to say, but I think Pedro's improvement will help the Pirates in more ways than the obvious. Pitchers will certainly start being more aggressive to the guys ahead of Alvarez, whether it be Overbay, Walker, Diaz, or Jones, which can do nothing but help those guys out. We expect Overbay to hit near 20 bombs this year, and he seems to be starting to heat up. If Pedro can start driving the ball and Overbay can get some better pitches to hit, I think he could go on a tear pretty soon.
Another quick note, Ronny Cedeno made another bad error in the 5th inning of tonight's game. A routine groundball was botched terribly by the Pirates shortstop. His defense has been a huge problem this year, eventually the Pirates might have to do something, even though they really don't have any other options at this point.
Here's the updated stats for the offense and starting pitching. Tonight's efforts certainly helped the Pirates averages quite a bit:
The biggest number in the above statistics is the starters ERA. The Pirates 5 starters have a combined ERA of 3.25, a pretty impressive number for any team, especially the Pirates. James McDonald will try to continue that success tomorrow as the Pirates play the Reds in game 2 of this series at 1:10.