In the first inning, it looked like the Pirates were going to get to Jake Arrieta. Josh Harrison hit a sharp ground ball up the middle that Starlin Castro made a really slick play on, then Gregory Polanco scorched a single to center, stole second, scored on Andrew McCutchen’s single, then McCutchen moved to third on a double by Neil Walker. Walker and McCutchen were stranded there, though, even though Pedro Alvarez hit a two-out flyout to center fairly hard.
When that inning ended, I wondered if maybe the Pirates weren’t going to regret not getting more runs off of Arrieta when they had him down, and that turned out to be the case. Arrieta’s final line was seven innings, four hits (meaning just one after the first, which didn’t come until the sixth), seven strikeouts, and no walks. That’s the unfortunately familiar trend from this time last week: lots of strikeouts, not many walks. If the little voice in your head was saying after this weekend that it was nice to see the Pirates hit but it’d be nicer to see them do it against a non-Brewer team, well, that voice probably hasn’t gone away yet.
AJ Burnett was fine tonight, if not quite as sharp as Arrieta or as he was in his first two starts. He only struck out one hitter and walked two in his six innings of work, but he scattered the eight hits he allowed enough to hold the Cubs to one run (thanks in part to Starling Marte’s laser throw to the plate to cut down Anthony Rizzo). Unfortunately, the bullpen showed some cracks tonight when Arquimedes Caminero allowed doubles to Jorge Soler and Kris Bryant. Bryant’s double saw Francisco Cervelli muff two throws at the plate, turning it into a de facto three-run homer, turning a 1-1 game into a 4-1 Cub lead.
I will continue to maintain that the Pirates won’t keep on losing every game started by AJ Burnett and Francisco Liriano if they pitch as well as they have thus far into the season, but seeing Kris Bryant and Jorge Soler get big hits to beat the Pirates is a disquieting reminder of what the Cubs have coming up from the minors (which was multiplied while I wrote this with the call-up of Addison Russell).
Finally, I just wanted to mention the incident in which a fan was injured when she was hit in the back of the head by a foul tip in the second inning. The Pirates released a statement indicating that she was “conscious and alert” when taken to the hospital by EMS, which is great news, given that there wasn’t much information other than the long delay during the game. Hopefully it’ll be an injury that looked scarier than it was and the fan will be able to make a quick recovery; my thoughts go out to the injured fan, if she happens to be a WHYGAVS reader.
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