Knocking Your Sox Off | Pirates 3 Red Sox 1

The Pittsburgh Pirates won a baseball game tonight at PNC Park. Although it counted for only 1 win in the standings, it was certainly bigger than that.

Tonight's win over the Boston Red Sox was one of the biggest wins the Pirates have had in PNC Park history. First of all, it put them over the .500 mark, which is pretty significant for the Pirates even though they've been over it a couple other times this year. Secondly, it was against the Boston Red Sox, and not just the Boston Red Sox, this is a Sox team that has one of the best offenses we have seen in the league for awhile. Although they were without Carl Crawford, it was still a heck of a lineup to go out and beat.

John Lester made the start for the Red Sox facing Paul Maholm, who has been great all year long. Maholm labored tonight however, making it through only 5.1 innings and throwing 103 pitches. He gave up 6 hits and walked 3 but only allowed 1 run and earning his 4th win of the year. The real story of this game was the bullpen. The combination of Chris Resop, Tony Watson, Daniel McCutchen, Jose Veras, and Joel Hanrahan went 4.2 scoreless innings and gave up only 3 hits and walked 1 while striking out 2.

The big threat came in the 8th inning when Veras started his inning off by giving up 2 straight singles to Darnell McDonald and J.D. Drew. The runners were moved over by a Jason Varitek sacrifice bunt and the Red Sox had the tying run in scoring position. Veras really got locked in after the bunt and struck out Marco Scutaro with a beautiful curveball that froze him. David Ortiz came in to pinch hit after that, which brought quite an ovation from the many Boston fans there, but Veras got him to ground out to shortstop and the Pirates fans trumped the Red Sox fans ovation and we went to the 9th. The Pirates couldn't add any more insurance, but it didn't matter because Hanrahan had just another easy 1-2-3 inning for his 21st save of the season. I'll have a post up tomorrow about Hanrahan's ridiculous performance of late.

The Pirates collected 9 hits on the day but runs were still hard to come by. They were helped greatly by some poor defense from the Bo Sox. The first run was set up by Mike Cameron going for a catch on a ball that he shouldn't have which led to Michael McKenry getting to 2nd as the ball trickled behind Cameron. McKenry would come around to score on a ball off the bat of Jose Tabata that hit the 3rd base bag. After that Chase d'Arnaud grounded into a double play which scored another run from 3rd and put the Pirates up 2-1 in the 3rd. An insurance run was added in the 6th as Lyle Overbay singled home Neil Walker after a couple of misplays from Kevin Youkilis (one of which was scored as an error). Chase d'Arnaud also collected his first major league hit with an impressive triple in the 5th that nobody really expected him to get a triple out of. That's more than what the Pirates needed as the pitching had just another great night.

The huge win moves the Pirates to 38-37 on the year and extends their winning streak to 3 after a tough 4 game skid. They just keep responding to adversity in positive ways and keep floating around .500, and in this case they are above it again. Tomorrow it's Jeff Karstens and Tim Wakefield, should be a great pitching matchup and a packed house. Let's Go Bucs.