It’s only been two games, but I’ve been quite impressed with the 2015 version of Jeff Locke. I don’t like to jump to too many conclusions based on just a couple of games, but Locke’s control looks vastly improved this year and his ground balls are way up. Obviously Locke’s control has varied pretty widely from start-to-start over his career, but I feel like we’ve seen enough from Locke in these two starts to understand why he was the given the nod over Vance Worley before Charlie Morton’s injury made the decision moot.
Of course, Locke’s faced a punchless and hapless Brewer team in both of his starts thus far and this Cub team is something entirely different. The Pirates really need Locke to step up today, for two reasons. The first is that a split with the Cubs here wouldn’t be an awful result from this series, even though the first two losses obviously sting. The second is that the bullpen is not in great shape at the moment, as Tony Watson is presumably unavailable this afternoon and Mark Melancon is not going to be any better today than he was on Tuesday.
That doesn’t mean that the Pirates are completely screwed today, of course, as I generally agree with this analysis by Joshua Choudhury that the bullpen hasn’t been quite as bad as it’s appeared to this point, but if Locke leaves the game after five innings with a one-run lead, I’m not going to expect good things from the second half of this game.
His mound opponent today is Kyle Hendricks. I don’t know how Hendricks made 13 starts for the Cubs last year without facing the Pirates once, but he somehow did it. I don’t honestly know a whole lot about him, but he had a strong rookie year last year in a Jeff Locke sort of way, where he came in as an interesting-but-fringey prospect and then put up great numbers without exceptional peripherals. His season got off to a rough start, as he gave up five runs in five innings to the Rockies in his first start and then a first inning homer to Matt Kemp in his second, but he settled down from there and ended up with a really solid start against the Padres last week. I don’t know much about him; this blurb characterizes him as a deceptive soft-tosser, which I suppose could be trouble for a free-swinging Pirate team that hasn’t seen him in person before. Or maybe not: the Pirates have plenty of offensive talent and have scored runs off of better pitchers than Kyle Hendricks this year.
Anyway, the first pitch is at 12:35. I’m pretty sure the Pirates will be wearing those awful new camo uniforms today, so it’s a perfect day for radio.
Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
