A GREAT day - May 25

The Pirates beat the Reds, who were in 1st. The Reds undefeated rookie Leake looked good and threw seven shut out innings and got a base hit. But you can always count on Dusty Baker to do something wrong. The Pirates were beginning to get hits on Leake. In fact they had gotten two singles with two outs in the seventh. Dusty let Leake hit (he got out) in the seventh and then gave up a fly ball that was miss played by Stubbs, and Aki ended up on third. Then Neil Walker rocketed a double down the line. Pirates had the lead. Hanrahan blew it by allowing a homer in the 8th, but Ryan Doumit hit one out in the ninth to save him. "Doh"tel got his 10th save.

It is clear that the ace of the staff is Paul Malholm. He pitched like an ace today. Did not have his best stuff. Threw as many balls as strike through about the first four innings. Despite that fact, he kept them scorless thanks to a double play, a pick off, and some just good pitching. He never let them score. He did find a rhythm in the later innings, but that is what ace pitchers do. Win when they do not have their dominating stuff.

The minors gave us four victories as well. Daniel McCutchen won, Rudy Owens dominated, and Kyle McPherson went 7 no-hit innings to get the win for lowly West Virginia. Alvarez had a pretty good day as did D'Arnaud, two guys who need to snap out of season long slumps. In Bradenton, Brock Holt went 4-5, which is about normal for him, Sanchez add two hits and Grossman added three. That team is just loaded when they are all hitting they cannot be stopped.

So top to bottom it was a big day for the Pirate organization.