4/11 Recap | Dodgers 4 Pirates 1

The Pirates fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers tonight, 4-1 and stand at a record of 2-3 now.

Erik Bedard started the game and is the first Pirates pitcher this season to not record a quality start. He threw five innings, let up two earned runs on eight hits, and struck out three. Not a horrible outing for the Pirates starter, but an outing the Bucs would have definitely wanted to see go a little bit deeper into the game. His two runs allowed came on RBI singles by Juan Rivera and Andre Ethier. Bedard left the game with no outs in the sixth and two men on. Chris Resop and Tony Watson did a solid job keeping it at a one run game, as Watson got James Loney to pop out with the bases loaded to end the threat in the sixth inning. Dee Gordon doubled to lead off the seventh, and the Pirates called on Evan Meek to get them out of the inning. Meek struck out Mark Ellis and Matt Kemp, but let up RBI singles to Juan Rivera and Tony Gwynn before getting out of the inning with a 4-1 score, with stood as the final. Jared Hughes pitched the eighth inning letting up only one baserunner on an error, and struck out one.

On the offensive side of the ball, we saw another poor day by the Pirates. We finally got to see some offensive production out of Clint Barmes, but other than that, we didn't get much more. Barmes hit a solo homerun to lead off the third inning, which was his first hit as a Pirate, and the only run they would score all night. Garrett Jones picked up two hits tonight as well, a single and a double, his first hits of the season. The Pirates got two men on with only one out in the sixth inning, but failed to get any further, as Neil Walker lined into a six-four double play to end the inning, with McLouth getting doubled-off at second. Javy Guerra set down the Pirates in order in the ninth, picking up his league-leading fourth save of the season.

The defense tonight for the Bucs was both good and bad. Neil Walker had an excellent play backing up first base after a bad throw by Pedro Alvarez as he cut down the runner from going to second, but also dropped a ball that would have easily picked off Dee Gordon at second base later in the game. Nate McLouth started his first game of the season in right field and had two solid plays out there, one of them being a diving catch to prevent the bases being loaded with no outs. Alvarez had two awful throws at third, both resulting in runners making it to first.

The Pirates bats really need to wake up. It's as simple as that. We're getting solid starts out of our pitchers, but can't get anything going as far as hitting goes. We still have to face Arizona and San Francisco, two better teams than Los Angeles, the rest of the road tirp, so the Pirates better hope to get at least one game out of the series tomorrow night as Jeff Karstens is set to take the hill against Chris Capuano, with the first pitch coming in around 10:10 PM.