Pirates Haunted By Big Inning, Could Be A Trend

The Pirates came out extremely flat after their 2+ days of rest. They were held scoreless by Shaun Marcum and a series of bullpen guys, and collected only 4 hits the entire game. They didn't get a hit until the 5th inning, when they got 2 in a row to start the inning but couldn't score. You have to give Marcum some credit, he is a very talented pitcher and he was very efficient tonight. However, the Pirates offense hasn't been good at all in their first homestand, and tonight was their flattest effort of the year.

On the pitching side, Kevin Correia was excellent through his first 5 innings. He had a no-hitter going until the sixth inning, when he gave up 4 runs, 3 of which came from a Prince Fielder 3-run bomb. The bullpen pitched 3 scoreless innings but the offensive could not get anything going offensively to make their effort worthwhile.

The other big negative of tonight's game was that Jose Tabata was held hitless. He drew 2 walks, so it wasn't a completely unproductive day for Jose, but it stinks to see his 10 game streak come to an end. Also, the Pirates are now below .500 for the first time in 2011.

As tough as it is for me to say, I think tonight's game has a theme in it that is going to be a big issue for the Pirates this year. That theme is the big inning.

The Pirates pitching staff is very susceptible to the home run ball. Correia, Paul Maholm, Ross Ohlendorf, and even James McDonald are guys that are going to give up their share of flyballs, and they don't have the kind of stuff (with the possible exception of McDonald) to keep enough of them in the ballpark. We saw it tonight with the Fielder home run, and I think we are going to be seeing a lot more of it this year. Charlie Morton has proven that he can keep the ball on the ground with the best of them, so if he keeps up the approach he's taken thus far I don't see him being included in this discussion, but if he reverts to how he pitched last year it certainly could hurt him.

We have been saying all year that the offense has some major potential. With a leading 5 of Tabata-Walker-McCutchen-Overbay-Alvarez, there's no doubt that this offense could have some big innings of their own. We have yet to see one this year, with the possible exception of the inning in the first game when Walker hit the grand slam. The first couple of games it seemed that the top 3 were all locked in and hitting the ball extremely well, but since then they have been out of sync. Tabata has stayed hot, but Walker and McCutchen have been very inconsistent. I'm certainly not worried about McCutchen, but Walker and Alvarez certainly are major question marks offensively, at least for right now.

The Pirates are going to have a lot of games decided by big innings, if they can have them more often than they surrender them, they'll be a good baseball team. However, with the pitching staff we're working with and the youth and inexperience of the offense, I don't see it working in our favor.

The Pirates are 5-6 and will look to climb back to .500 tomorrow as they wrap up their series with the Brew Crew at 7:05.