Saturday, June 19, 2010

The Streak is Dead. Pirates win! (1-3)

Pedro gets his first hit and RBI on an automatic double. Jeff Karstens is making a case for a position on next year's rotation with a win and another clutch pitching performance. He gave up a run in the first, but then did not give up another until a three run homer in the 6th.

Streaky Lastings Milledge showed that when he is on, the Pirates can win. One of the reasons they have not won more this year is because Milledge has not been hot since we swept the Reds in the first month of the season. Lately he has started up a slow boil, and tonight he went 3 for 4 with a walk and 4 RBI's and 1 run.

But just to keep the drum beat up for a new manager, JR did make a huge mistake. I understand the need to get the win, but he wasted our bullpen. Here is the situation. You have plated several runs in a productive 5th inning, and there are two outs and Karstens is up. Now you either pinich hit or leave Karstens in to pitch. JR chose to leave him in effectively ending the rally. I have no problem with that at all. Karstens was rolling and had only thown about 55 pitches at that point. Karstens has some command issues coming out of the long inning and after two baserunners and one out (which was at third), Kartens gives up a big three run bomb that was just fair. Now, JR goes and gets him. The only thing that can tie the score now is another bomb. Karstens should have been allowed to face more hitters to see if his command was back. Instead JR goes for Carrasco, who gets no one out. The to face horrible hitting lefty, he wastes Javier Lopez. Lopez gets the lefty and then is left to face a righty, who gets a single. JR goes and uses Meek, who walks the bases loaded before getting Travis Haffner to end the inning. Meek bails out JR by going the 7th inning too. Hanrahan struggles but holds and Dotel puts one guy on but gets the save after McCutchen triples and Jones gets an RBI basehit to pad the lead.

Just to say something I think JR did well in this game was the use of speed. The Pirates are loaded with speed. McCutchen stole a base, Jones stole a base. McCutchen scored from second on an infield single. Add in the speed of Tabata and Milledge and this team can fly and should put a lot of pressure on pitchers.

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