As much as I’ve enjoyed the Pirate offense scoring a bunch of runs while the Brave defense flails around PNC Park like the 2001 Pirates, I’d love to see Pirate starter actually succeed against the nominal worst offense in baseball. It’d be doubly nice to see that pitcher be Francisco Liriano, who’s struggled quite a bit thus far in 2016. He’s mostly struggled away from PNC Park, though, so this game looks like it lines up pretty nicely for him.
Anyway, this is Starling Marte’s last game of paternity leave and Matt Joyce remains in right field, so I guess Alen Hanson’s role this week was supposed to be very limited. Julio Teheran starts for the Braves; he’s been pretty OK so far this year, but he’s winless because the Braves are so bad. First pitch is at 7:05.
