This was the Pirates first road interleague win since June 17, 2009, when Andrew McCutchen hit his first big league home run against the Minnesota Twins in a stadium that no longer exists. The streak stopper didn't come without some major drama however, and it turned out being quite a ballgame.
The theme of the night was home runs. The Blue Jays have been known to hit a bunch of balls over the fence (they have the 6th most dingers in the major leagues this year), and they certainly didn't disappoint in that regard tonight, hitting 4 bombs. Edwin Encarnacion led the charge with 2 longballs, and Jose Bautista and Corey Patterson also joined the party with round trippers. The Pirates hit 2 balls out of the yard, one of which came from Alex Presley who was making his highly anticipated 2011 debut, and the other came from the bat of the aforementioned Andrew McCutchen. If you're counting, I used 6 different words/expressions to mean "home run" in this paragraph, and I didn't even use a thesaurus.
As you can tell it wasn't a great night to be a starting pitcher. Kevin Correia made the most of his offense and picked up 10th win of the season by pitching 6 innings and giving up 4 earned runs while striking out 3 and walking just 1. Jo-Jo Reyes wasn't so good, giving up 6 earned runs on 9 hits in 3.2 innings for his 7th loss of the year. Correia is well on his way to 15 wins and could flirt with 20, which would be quite an accomplishment for a Pirates pitcher.
The play of the game undoubtably came in the 7th inning. After Tony Watson had given up back-to-back home runs, the Blue Jays got a walk and a double to put the tying run on 3rd and the go-ahead runner on 2nd. Chris Resop had his hands full. He started his houdini routine by striking out Eric Thames swinging. After that he intentionally walked Bautista to load the bases for Adam Lind, who roped a line drive right at Lyle Overbay, who promptly snared it and walked over to touch first to complete an inning ending double play. Very bad luck for the Blue Jays, but the Pirates will take it every time. After that it was bullpen domination time. Jose Veras sat down 3 Blue Jays in a row in the 8th and Joel Hanrahan notched 23rd save of the year by getting 2 groundouts, allowing a high-bouncing infield single, and striking out Thames on a 98 mile per hour fastball to slam the door. Heckuva game.
The Pirates offense came alive tonight, and they don't seem to be look nearly as negligent as before. They have their season batting average up to .242 and they have hit .250 in their last 10 games against some pretty solid pitchers. The starters ERA remains solid but has climbed a bit in the last couple series, it currently sits at 3.70, here are the rest of the season stats:
So the Pirates are 40-38 and things are looking up despite being bit majorly by the injury bug. Jose Tabata is on the DL but Alex Presley relaxed us quite a bit with his 2 hit 3 RBI performance tonight. Matt Diaz even looked competent at the plate and has hit very well this month (hitting .319). They are getting some help from the long ball (4 in the last 4 games) and have a lot of speed in the lineup. These can only be good things and it's exciting to watch this team compete every night.
So check back tomorrow, I'll have a preview of tomorrow's game and maybe even some bonus stuff. Also, be sure to listen to my sports show on TribLive Radio tomorrow (Wednesday) at 5:00.
That's all.