Running Into Another Loss | Nationals 4 Pirates 2

The Pittsburgh Pirates dropped their 6th straight game tonight to the Nationals by the score of 4-2.

Let's start with the good news - Paul Maholm pitched well, going 6.1 innings and giving up only 3 earned runs. Three runs allowed just hasn't been enough to win games for this Pirates team lately however, as Paul took his 6th loss of the season while getting only 2 measly runs of support. It has been ridiculous how little run support Paul has gotten this year. Maholm showed some really good pitching tonight, striking out 7 more batters. He has been getting a pretty good amount of strikeouts this year, tonight was his 3rd start of the year in which he struck out more than 5 batters.

The bad news is that the Pirates did not score tonight, despite picking up 10 hits. Now any time you get 10 hits and only 2 runs, you know there was some element of either bad luck or bad decision making, and tonight it was bad decision making, as the title of this post alludes to.

Let's flash back to the top of the 4th inning. Brandon Wood led off with a walk, which brought Chris Snyder to the plate who hit a bloop single into centerfield. The centerfielder Roger Bernadina took a little while to get to the ball because it was hit so shallow, so Wood decided to press his luck and try to go first-to-third on the single. This is something that manager Clint Hurdle has been stressing all year long, aggressiveness on the basepaths. However, there is a difference between being aggressive and being wreckless, and what we saw here was the latter. With nobody out, there is no reason for Wood to try to make it to third unless he is sure he can make it. He isn't the fastest guy, and Bernadina was fielding the ball very shallow in center, and all it took was a somewhat on-target throw to get Wood by 5 feet.

So Wood was thrown out easily at third which left the Pirates with a runner on first and 1 out. Ronny Cedeno then did his best to erase the mistake by doubling to right center field. Unfortunately it was Snyder on first and it takes a whole lot for him to score from first. So the Pirates had 2nd and 3rd with 1 out, a very good situation to score. However, Maholm was at the plate. The infield came way in, guarding against the suicide squeeze. With the infield in and the Pirates slowest baserunner at third I thought there was no way they would be foolish enough to try the squeeze play, but they did just that. Snyder took off (on a very bad break) and Maholm whiffed on a bunt, which resulted in Snyder being hung up between third and home (I really don't think Snyder would have scored on anything less than a very good bunt anyway considering the break he got and his lack of speed). Maholm went on to strikeout looking on a borderline pitch and the Pirates did not get a run in an inning when their first three batters went walk-single-double, absolutely unacceptable.

I understand that the Pirates have to press it a little bit on the basepaths, especially with the lack of offensive production they have been getting, but what we saw in the 4th inning was just plain stupid in my opinion. You might disagree, but I'm pretty set in stone on this one. We've seen Hurdle make a handful of really questionable calls this year, and it's starting to cost the Pirates more often than it helps them. We knew this would be a potential problem in spring training, but we thought taking risks would work out positively more often than negatively, I'm not sure if that has been the case this year.

That inning could have changed this ballgame entirely, but instead it was just another loss, which dropped the Pirates to 5 games below the .500 mark.

They'll try it again tomorrow against the Nationals as Charlie Morton takes the hill against Jordan Zimmermann.