Pirates Split Double Header With Brewers

After getting embarassed in the first game of the double header by the score of 8-1 and falling to 0-9 on the season against Milwaukee, the Pirates finally played like a major league team against the beer makers and won by the score of 9-2.

The Pirates got great starting pitching in both games. First, Jeff Karstens went 7 innings and gave up just 2 runs on 6 hits. After that, Brad Lincoln went 6 innings and gave up 2 earned of his own while striking out 1 and allowing just 3 hits, bouncing back from a 2-hit, 2-run first inning. I think Lincoln was the story of the night. He was absolutely fantastic from innings 2 through 6 and put the Pirates in position to win.

The offense didn't show up for the first game outside of an 8th inning solo home run from Ryan Ludwick, his first as a Pirate. The team collected just 8 hits, 3 of which came from Jose Tabata who is absolutely on fire (.429 since returning from the DL), and scoring just the one run. The second game was a different story fortunately, as they scored 9 runs and collected 10 hits (6 of those hits and 7 of the runs coming in the 7th inning) on the back of 2-hit performances from Tabata and Ryan Doumit (who homered in the 2nd game).

It was definitely a feel good win for the Pirates tonight, even with the bad loss to start the day. The Pirates are now 1-9 against the Brewers this year, which is still horrid, but at least they know they can beat this team. There's 2 more of these games here in the next couple days, so we'll see if they can make it a win streak.