Jerry Meals was umpiring 3rd base and did a fine job. And by "did a fine job", I mean "didn't blow the game". There's two things to blame for this loss, and both are becoming more and more commonplace: the offense and the game management.
The easiest thing to point to is another anemic performance with the sticks. Seven hits through ten innings and only one run scored. Eleven runners left on base and eight strikeouts. The only offense came on a Garrett Jones 6th inning home run, his tenth of the year and his eighth solo shot. Neil Walker collected 2 hits but was stranded both times, and Andrew McCutchen was held hitless again.
A huge story in this game, as I mentioned above, was the game management. It started in the third inning when Xavier Paul led the inning off with a single and was then caught stealing. The very next inning, Pedro Alvarez was thrown out at the plate trying to score on a pretty shallow fly ball, which ended the inning. In the 6th, after a Walker single, Hurdle called a hit and run and Neil was thrown out at 2nd after a McCutchen swing and miss. Things didn't get better in the 7th as Brandon Wood led off with a single but watched the momentum of the inning be once again destroyed by 2 straight sacrifice bunt attempts. The Pirates have been trying to play small ball all series, and it has cost them big time the last 2 nights.
We knew this was coming to some extent when Hurdle was hired. He said the team was going to be aggressive on the bases and really try to get every possible run they could. That automatically means that there are going to be games like this, when nothing seems to work and the small ball just turns in to giving up outs for nothing. However, the offensive game plan has worked to some extent, as the Pirates are still sitting pretty with a 53-49 record.
The other big issue tonight was bullpen management. Paul Maholm was great, going 7 innings, allowing 1 run and striking out 8. After that they threw out Tony Watson and Jose Veras, who put up 0's in their innings before the game went to extras. The team obviously didn't score in the top of the 10th and they needed a new arm. Joel Hanrahan was available, but Hurdle obviously wanted to save him for a save him as long as he could, so he brought in Chris Leroux, who promptly lost the game while recording only 1 out. It's hard to argue with not using Hanrahan in a tie game in the 10th inning with a fresh arm like Leroux there, but just like everything else tonight, it didn't go as planned.
This has been a really rough 2 days for the Pirates. They've now lost 4 of their last 6, and have 3 games coming up with the Phillies after the season finale with the Braves tomorrow. Tomorrow seems to be another one of those "big games" for the Pirates, getting a win and a split before heading to Philadelphia would be huge. The ball will be in Kevin Correia's hand, which isn't exactly what you want right now after his recent performances.
Here's the updated offense and starting pitching stats, the last two nights certainly haven't helped our team batting average which is now down to .244, but the pitching numbers remain impressive.
