In the second inning, things started to look ugly for the Pirates. Gerrit Cole walked Kris Bryant to start the inning, then Bryant moved to second when Pedro Alvarez missed the pickoff throw from Cole. Miguel Montero hit a ground ball down the first base line, and it bounced off of Alvarez and into right field. Cole threw to first again, and Alvarez missed it again. Instead of things getting worse, though, Cole bore down. He struck out Starlin Castro, Chris Coghlan, and Kyle Hendricks to end the second. He used ten pitches to get through the third. He hit Anthony Rizzo to start the fourth, but then struck out Bryant and Montero, with Rizzo getting caught trying to steal second to end the inning. He breezed through the fifth on ten more pitches, and got the Cubs in order again in the sixth. After Alvarez’s second error, Cole pitched five innings, he struck out eight, he gave up no hits, and he faced 15 hitters total. The Cub lineup that’s battered Pirate pitching for the first two games of this series was helpless against Gerrit Cole. He was exactly what the Pirates needed on the mound tonight, and it’s hard to overstate that given the way the first two games of this series went.
The Pirate offense started slowly, but it eventually gave Cole what he needed to get his fourth win of 2015. The Pirates tied the game in the fourth when Jung Ho Kang singled home Starling Marte from third, and they took the lead in the fifth when Marte worked Kyle Hendricks for an eight-pitch-bases-loaded walk after falling behind 0-2 in the count. They finally broke the game open in the sixth with a Chris Stewart double (his first extra base hit of the year). Stewart came around on a Jordy Mercer single after an intentional walk, then Andrew McCutchen tripled two runs home and scored later on a Marte single. The Bucs added a couple more insurance runs in the eighth.
Stewart, McCutchen, and Jordy Mercer all had two hits in the game. McCutchen’s triple was crushed to center field, with the exact sort of swing that ‘Cutch hasn’t been making much this April. Jung Ho Kang had three hits, including a run-scoring double in the eighth that very nearly missed being his first home run in the States. The three-hit night has Kang up to .269/.310/.346 on the season, which is nice to see after his rough start. The Pirates had 14 hits in total, which I believe ties their season high from a couple of days ago in Arizona.
Given the ugly way that this series started, it was just nice to see the Pirates put together a complete game and a convincing win over a division rival. I suspect that Cole’s great start to the year is going to start getting some national attention after tonight, because it’s pretty hard to miss at this point. After that uneven start in the rain-delayed game in Cincinnati, Cole mowed through the Tigers and Brewers, pitched into the eighth against the Diamondbacks, and dominated the Cubs on a night that the Pirates really needed a big start from him. Honestly, I’m finding it hard to be anything but giddy about these last four starts.
As disappointing as losing two of three to the Cubs is, the Pirates go to St. Louis next, and they get to start Francisco Liriano and AJ Burnett in the series’ first two games. As the last week or so shows, it doesn’t take much to swing things one way or another in April baseball.
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