My Nightmare (31-56)

The Pirates won on Wed, but lost in the afternoon game today. The bad news first. The win was tossed by Charlie Morton. Yup. Morton won his second after throwing 6 innings of 2 run baseball. That is not good. Nothing is worse than a Charlie Morton showing signs of not being the worst pitcher in baseball. If he makes the rotation next year, it will set the franchise back several years. Like it did this year. Morton has had a few not horrible outings in a row.

The loss today was an example of why the Pirates had such a bad year. Brian Burres went just 2.1 innings, and the game was over by then. Burres has had a few good wins lately, but he cannot sustain it. This is what happens with Burres, and why he is not a big league starter anywhere other than Pittsburgh.

The good news is that Pedro Alvarez is back on track. A day off always seems to reset his swing. He hit a big double and a homer in the win last night, and had a double that hit the top of the wall tonight for the Pirates first run. They only managed one more on a late inning sac fly by McCutchen.

In the end, this can be seen as reducing the magic number for the first overall pick to 5.