Electric Lives | Pirates 5 Reds 0

The Pittsburgh Pirates 6 game losing streak is over.

Charlie Morton put the team on his back tonight. He pitched his 2nd complete game of the season, and this time he didn't give up a meaningless home run in the 9th. Morton earned his 5th win of the season in a tidy 106 pitch-69 strike effort. Morton got 14 groundouts, 5 strikeouts, and 3 flyouts tonight. He walked only 2 batters and surrendered 5 hits that were all scattered nicely. There were only 4 occasions in tonight's game that a Reds baserunner reached scoring position, two of those being in the first inning.

Morton just kept on doing what he's been doing all year; consistently attacking the strike zone and giving the opposition a heavy dose of the sinker. He mixed in some offspeed stuff wisely and cruised through 9 innings. The way he looked in the 9th showed that probably could have thrown another zero or two on the board. It was a fun game to watch.

It might be a little too soon still to call Morton a legitimate ace, but it's not like this season just started - tonight was Charlie's 8th start of the year. Seven of those eight starts have been really good; there's little chance that this is a fluke.

The Pirates haven't seen this kind of pitching consistently since Zach Duke's first go round in the big leagues when he posted a 1.81 ERA and started 6-0 in 14 starts in 2005. Another pitcher comes to mind that isn't really comparable in style but similar in results - and that's Oliver Perez of 2004.

All of this has come after most Pirate fans had written Charlie off entirely. They were tired of hearing about the stuff he has, they wanted results. This just goes to show that sometimes you can never be too patient with a guy with talent, especially in a struggling organization like the Pirates.

Neil Huntington knew what he was doing when he acquired Morton in the trade that sent Nate McLouth to Atlanta and subsequently started Andrew McCutchen's big league career. It took Morton a while to really figure the big leagues out, but it seems that he's got it down and will be a reliable big league starter for (hopefully) years to come. You can't really predict that, there's a lot that can happen in an extended period of time with a young pitcher, but it is certainly something that warrants excitement.

Morton didn't need much offense, and he got all his run support on two swings of the bat. Pedro Alvarez crushed his 2nd home run of the year in the top of the 4th, which brought in 3 runs, and McCutchen provided some insurance in the 7th with a 2-run bomb of his own. Both home runs traveled over 410 feet.

The Pirates are now 19-23 and have busted out of their longest losing streak of the season. They will look to start a winning streak and sweep the Reds in this 2-game set tomorrow at 12:35, it's James McDonald vs. Johnny Cueto.

*edit* just to give you a little perspective on how Morton works, brooksbaseball.net shows that Morton threw 82 2-seam fastballs (sinkers) tonight. Eighty-two. He also threw something like 12 changeups, 9 curveballs, 2 four seamers, and possibly a slider (although it was probably another changeup with movement or something like that splitter pitch he's been throwing occasionally). The guy doesn't need to mix it up to be successful. That doesn't mean he's not being cautious about the heavy dose of one pitch; he worked in his changeup near the middle of the start when all the Reds hitters had seen the sinker (two seamer) enough to sit on it. Fantastic.