Well, this is a little better.
The Pirates jumped all over Mike Fiers early on, with second inning doubles from Neil Walker, Francisco Cervelli, and Jeff Locke that lead to three runs. They swung and missed a ton, particularly against Fiers (he struck out eight Pirates in his five innings), but Pedro Alvarez added a home run in the fourth inning and Starling Marte had a sac fly in the fifth and a long home run in the eighth, and so we finally saw some of the offensive punch that we know these Pirates are capable of.
Jeff Locke was solid enough; he cruised through six innings, then got into a ton of trouble in the fourth inning in pretty typical Jeff Locke fashion (leadoff walk, 29 pitches to close the inning out), but avoided any further incident in the rest of his start. He gave up just the two runs in the fourth, and while he only got two strikeouts in his six innings of work, he also only walked the one hitter and got nine groundouts (against two flyouts). That’s all-around a relatively solid start in a spot where the Pirates needed it. The bullpen was good enough: Jared Hughes gave up two extra base hits in his 1 1/3 innings of work and Antonio Bastardo couldn’t clean up for him in the eighth, but Arquimedes Caminero came in to throw smoke and get out of the eighth inning jam, then Mark Melancon closed down the ninth without incident.
The Pirates are undefeated in games without rain delays in 2015.
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