Yesterday I made an extensive post about Esmil Rogers. I said that he's not as bad as his career ERA suggests and he certainly has some potential. That said, I was fully expecting the Pirates to put some runs up on him. He is definitely subject to the big inning, and it looked like the Pirates were primed to have one of those in the first inning after Jose Tabata and Neil Walker led the game off with singles. Unfortunately, the Pirates were only able to score one that inning and then didn't get another hit until the 8th inning. Yeah, the Pirates went 6 full innings without getting a hit, not exactly what the sell-out crowd was hoping for.
On the mound, Paul Maholm wasn't terrible, but wasn't very good either. He gave up a couple of unearned runs after a pretty sickening throwing error by Walker in the first, and gave up a moon shot home run to Troy Tulowitzki in the 4th inning. He got into more trouble in the 6th and was pulled. The bullpen didn't help him out and the Rockies had 7 runs on the board by the time the game was over.
This home opener could not have gone much worse for the Pirates. The good news is they play again tomorrow and still have a winning record to defend. Here's the updated offense/starting pitching stats, after 7 games:
As you can tell, the starting pitching has been the key to the success early on. The starters have a collective ERA of 2.57 while giving up under 6 hits a start. If they can keep that up, they will win a lot of games. However, Maholm's start today seems to be indicate that the Pirates won't be able to keep this up. Kevin Correia has looked very good in his first two starts, but is surrendering a lot of fly balls that will probably start resulting in home runs sooner or later, which will hurt him.
4-3 after 7 games is certainly something any Pirate fan will take, but we're certainly not trying to see another performance like tonight's anytime soon, especially at home.
They'll go back at it tomorrow night at 7:05, sending Ross Ohlendorf to the mound to take on Pirates arch nemesis, Jorge de la Rosa (more on that later).