Doing It McRight | Pirates 3 Braves 1

Coming into this second half, I was very high on James McDonald. Well, J-Mc (I'm deleting the 'a' purposely) showed you all why. He was dealing early, striking out 4 batters in the first 2 innings. The fastball seemed to have more zip on it than usual and his curveball was just filthy, you can check out his pitch f/x for the night here. At one point, he got Freddie Freeman to swing at a pitch that bounced literally 6 inches in front of the plate. When the book was closed on McDonald, he went 5.1 innings and gave up 8 hits while striking out 9. He did not allow a run and he didn't walk anybody either. He didn't seem to attack the strike zone very much, but got away with it since he allowed no free passes. The ball was hit hard on him a handful of times and those 8 hits are kind of scary, but he stayed calm the whole night and executed. All-in-all, it was probably his best outing of the year.

The bullpen did a nice job cleaning up for him, as Chris Resop got 2 huge outs in the 6th to strand a couple on pace and preserve the lead. After that, Daniel McCutchen had a 1-2-3 7th but allowed a lead off home run to Chipper Jones in the 8th. He walked the next batter and was replaced by Jose Veras, who promptly got 3 straight outs and set up Joel Hanrahan for his 29th save of the year.

The offense was pretty quiet again, but managed to squeak out 3 runs on 5 hits. The Pirates got 2 in the second after Tim Hudson walked McCutchen and Alvarez to start the inning. A sacrifice fly and bad decision throw from Nate McLouth moved both runners into scoring position. McCutchen scored when Ronny Cedeno grounded out and then Michael McKenry brought in Alvarez on a sharp single to left. The Bucs added an insurance run in the 6th when McCutchen singled home Garrett Jones, who had another ugly day at the plate and is now hitting .236 on the year.

All that said, the Pirates MVP tonight might seriously be Nate McLouth. The former Bucco cost his team a run in that 2nd inning with the foolish throw to third that allowed Alvarez to advance to second, and he also left 4 runners on base tonight. In the 6th, McLouth had the bases loaded with 1 out and fouled out harmlessly to the McKenry. He also popped out in the 8th to end a mini-threat the Braves had going with a runner on. Not a great night for half of the inspiration of this blog's name.

The other big story of the night was the return of Pedro Alvarez, who went 1/3 with a walk and a run scored. He hit was a ground single through the middle that was hit decently hard. He showed good plate patience and got into some deep counts. He struck out once as well and left 3 on base, but it's certainly good to have him back in the lineup.

This was a huge win for the Pirates, and a great night for The "Mc" Effect. Six different Mc's got in this game (James McDonald, Andrew McCutchen, Daniel McCutchen, Michael McKenry, Nate McLouth, and Brian McCann), and that's a new record. McDonald was the best of them all, and this is just another step toward him making my 2nd half MVP prediction a reality.