OK, now that I’ve had a full night of sleep, woken up, stretched out some, eaten breakfast, and gotten some caffeine inside of me, I’m willing to try and start re-considering this game from last night.
The roof was open at Chase Field last night, and as a result the Pirates and Diamondbacks played a game that might as well have been played on the moon. Sean Rodriguez and Gregory Polanco hit monstrous back-to-back homers in the second inning, and then Jordy Mercer followed up with one just as long in the third. According to Statcast, Mercer’s was the longest in Major League Baseball this year, Polanco’s was the fifth longest, and Rodriguez’s was the sixth. The Pirates nearly added a couple more homers off of Patrick Corbin; Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte both hit balls to the warning track.
The long home runs for the Pirates were exciting, but the Diamondbacks hit three homers of their own (two off of Jonathon Niese and one off of Tony Watson) and nipped at the Pirates’ heels all night, turning the homer-drive 5-1 Pirate lead into a 5-4 game, then bringing it back to 8-7 after the Pirates had stretched their lead to 8-2. The bullpen looked a bit shaky last night, but both Watson and Melancon were asked to pitch outside of their normal roles (Watson got five outs and ran into trouble in his second inning of work, Melancon had to come in in the middle of the eighth to get the last out and got into some trouble before working out of it).
Judging from the final results of that game, I’m not sure I’d read too much into any of it; not the Pirates’ monster homers, not the home runs Niese gave up, not Watson’s on-going struggle with homers, none of it. The Pirates played a game in crazily favorable offensive conditions and outslugged the Diamondbacks. They got just enough big hits and just enough timely outs to put a second straight road game into the win column. Ugly wins count just the same as pretty ones, and when you’re a team with a reputation for starting slow that seems to be settling into some new identities, you take the wins however you get them.
Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images
