- James McDonald looked good. He was certainly showing some rust from not having a lot of action recently, and that was expected. He labored quite a bit in the first inning and that kind of set the pace for what his night was going to be like. The stuff was good as always, his fastball velocity was a mile per hour or so short of what it normally is, but still effective, and he had his devastation curveball pretty well in tact. He really did a nice job tonight for the kind of control he had. If McDonald can get into a good groove and shake off the rust, he could very good in his next few starts.
- Pedro Alvarez looked terrible. He was 0/4 with 2 strikeouts and left 4 men on base, including 2 in the 8th inning with 2 outs in a huge part of the ballgame. He really just looks helpless at the plate right now. It's not even a matter of being early or late or anything like that, it seems like he just doesn't know what to swing at. In his first at bat, he watched 3 clear strikes go past without even attempting a swing. All 3 of the pitches were extremely hittable, at least that's how it looked to me, but for some reason he let them all go past. I don't know if he was trying to be patient and see some pitches early on, but later in the game he swung at the first pitch of the at bat, not a bad pitch to hit, but he turned on it and grounded into a double play. It was an ugly night for Alvarez, and he really has only looked good at the plate a few times so far this year. This isn't really a surprise, we all expected Alvarez to take some time to get back in the swing of things, especially considering his age, so he should work some things out and get a lot better in the next weeks.
- The bullpen lost this one, but didn't do a bad job. Jeff Karstens got 4 big outs in the 5th and 6th innings, and Chris Resop finished off the game with 5 outs of his own, allowing only 1 hit. The problem was Garrett Olson, who was charged with the loss after he walked one and gave up a hit along with the earned run that lost the Pirates the game. No one expects much from Olson, but I think he can definitely help this bullpen. He's a decent strikeout pitcher and he's good against lefties, which is why he's in there. It's also certainly a big bright spot to see Resop be effective early on.
- When all was said and done, the Pirates had their 2nd loss of the season, but again, it wasn't a bad loss. They got good pitching, they just couldn't push enough runs across the plate. The offense was non-existant after the first inning, scattering 6 hits throughout those 8 innings, and not being able to do anything with runners in scoring position. They again struggled with the strikeout, going down on strikes 11 times against a widely unimpressive lineup of pitchers. John Bowker and Steven Pearce recorded outs in big points of the ballgame, which continued the trends of the bench really doing nothing early on this year. Ryan Doumit had a pinch hit in the 9th, but (his pinch-runner Josh Rodriguez) was stranded on first as Pearce struck out to end the ballgame.
The Pirates will try again to win the series tomorrow at 1:45, it's Kevin Correia against Chris Carpenter, should be a good one.