The last few days for the Pirates have been relatively non-eventful from the perspective of a team in their situation. They were thoroughly out-dueled by Yu Darvish in his 2016 return on Saturday evening, Francisco Liriano turned in what is an alarmingly characteristic start on Sunday afternoon, and the Pirates smacked the hell out of the Marlins last night. Splitting four games on the road, three of which came against a good Texas team and none of which featured Gerrit Cole on the mound, isn’t really a bad start to a road trip, though it’s also increasingly unhelpful with the Cubs off refusing to lose to whoever it is that they’re playing right now.
The good news rotation has more or less stabilized at this point with the glaring exception of Liriano. Jon Niese’s last four starts have been very good and having the fourth one come on the road against a good Texas team is a great sign. Jeff Locke has thrown strikes lately, which is good enough on most nights and occasionally (like last night) a step beyond that. Juan Nicasio is a relief pitcher masquerading as a starter and given the impending arrival of someone (probably Jameson Taillon), but I think that on the whole he’s done a decent impersonation of a back-end starter this year and he’s not going to be asked to do it for much longer. Liriano, though, is becoming increasingly divorced from the strike zone and as a result, gave up two homers to lefties on Sunday. He gave up three homers total to lefties in both 2014 and 2015 and didn’t even give up one in 2015. To say I’m concerned about him at this point would be an understatement; his control has always verged towards dangerous, but this is his worst stretch as a Pirate.
Anyway! Gerrit Cole and Jose Fernandez pitch against each other tonight. One of the very best things about baseball in 2016 is the incredible amount of young pitching talent in the game, and Fernandez and Cole are both big parts of that. Fernandez has been excellent in his return from Tommy John surgery this year, although his control was a bit shaky earlier in the season (although it’s looked excellent lately). Cole has a 1.04 ERA in his last four starts, though he didn’t strike out anyone two starts ago and he had a very inefficient start against the Diamondbacks the last time out that saw a shaky beginning before he got things in line around the fourth inning.
Anyway, it’s a fun pitching matchup tonight and a win puts the Pirates in very good position to take three of four in this series and finish the road trip with a winning record. And it would, at the very least, keep them from falling further behind the Cubs.
