The New York Mets took rather rudely the Pittsburgh Pirates hospitality in the series opener on Friday and handed the Bucs a tough 8-1 loss to open up the four-game series. However, the Pirates showed more resiliency and bounced back Saturday night with a well played and hard fought 3-2 victory.
James McDonald made the start and got hit around pretty good, scattering 8 hits in 6 innings. In those innings he gave up only 2 earned runs however, which was good enough for a quality start and a win in this instance. The bullpen certainly helped J-Mac with 3 shut-out innings. Tim Wood kept his perfect ERA in tact by throwing his 2nd scoreless inning in as many nights. Jose Veras got a huge strikeout of Ronny Paulino with 2 runners in scoring position to end the 8th inning and after that it was all Joel Hanrahan, who converted his 16th straight save opportunity, he has not blown one yet and has a beautiful 1.52 ERA, true all-star numbers. I know closers are overvalued, but it sure is nice to have serious confidence in your 9th inning guy, especially when you're playing a lot of low-scoring ballgames like the Pirates have been this year.
The offense was scattered and sprinkled with good fortune tonight as the go-ahead and eventually game-winning hit off the bat of Andrew McCutchen was booted by third baseman Daniel Murphy in the 3rd inning. I'm sure the Mets would like to have that play and a couple others back, but they can't have them and the Pirates are 31-32.
Jose Tabata kept up his recent tear going 2-for-4; he now has his average up to .268 (he was hitting .239 before Wednesday's game). Andrew McCutchen added a hit in 3 at bats and his hitting .284, and Josh Harrison chipped in 2 hits of his own to get his average up to .300. The top of the lineup is finally starting to look like a major league top of the lineup in the scorebook, and it's resulting in some timely runs.
Neil Walker continues to struggle with an 0-for-3 game, Lyle Overbay one-upped him with an 0-for-4 and Toregas started his Bucco career off with an 0-for-3 of his own (one of many we'll be seeing from the catcher position in the coming months).
Tonight was a great game to win, with the 3rd largest crowd in PNC Park history at the game and coming off the first really bad loss in awhile. McDonald didn't have his best stuff, but battled nicely and the offense picked up him up and got him his 4th win of the season. Here's the updated stats:
