It’s nice to see this Pirate team start to win some baseball games in different ways. They came into this game having lost quite a few pitchers duels (almost all of them with AJ Burnett or Francisco Liriano on the mound — six of their eight losses have been started by those two, even though they’ve pitched quite well), so it was really good to see Burnett make another solid start, and to see the club finally scratch out the runs necessary to get a win in a game started by him. It certainly wasn’t pretty, as Rubby De La Rosa held the Pirates to one run on four hits, with eight strikeouts and no walks in his seven innings of work. Tony Watson and Mark Melancon put two runners on base in the eighth and ninth innings, respectively.
The Bucs had just enough of everything, though, thanks to those three pitchers, to Neil Walker for hitting two doubles that turned into two runs, to Pedro Alvarez and Starling Marte for driving Walker in, and to Francisco Cevelli for nipping a ninth inning D’Back rally in the bud by catching Nick Ahmed stealing with one out.
After those two frustrating losses to the Cubs, the Pirates were 6-8 with only one win against a non-Brewer team. They’ve won four in a row now, with a chance for their first road sweep tomorrow. It’s a nice turnaround, especially with this road trip heading to Chicago and then St. Louis after tomorrow’s finale in Arizona.
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