You know the Jeff Locke drill by now; we all do. After a couple of really ugly starts in which Locke lost all feel for the strike zone and had Pirate fans proclaiming that THIS FINALLY HAD TO BE END OF, Locke came out in Coors Field tonight and spun a gem. He threw six shutout innings, he struck out eight, he scattered five hits, he walked two, and eight of the other ten outs he got were on the ground. PitchFX says Locke didn’t throw even one curveball tonight, and all of his fastballs registered as two-seamers. That could be because the Pirates went in with a specific gameplan to mitigate Coors Field, or it could be because Locke’s been struggling with the strike zone and they went in trying to simplify his approach. Whatever the case, it worked tonight, and Locke gave us our regularly scheduled reminder that he’s not always a bad pitcher.
After only scoring one run through the first six innings, the Pirate offense finally came alive in the seventh. Gregory Polanco singled to start the inning and moved to third on a couple of outs, then Jason Rogers and John Jaso drew a walks with Polanco scoring on a wild pitch, and finally Matt Joyce hit a three-run homer to break the game open. Rogers has only been up for a few days, but he already slots in really nicely with the patient, new-look Pirate offense. Joyce got the start to give Andrew McCutchen a day off and continued his solid start to the season. That’s yet another rally started from the bottom part of the Pirate lineup; when Kang gets back and McCutchen starts hitting, these Pirates are going to do some unfathomable things at the plate.
Finally, it’s worth tipping the cap to AJ Schugel for his work in preserving the bullpen tonight. He’s just a couple of days removed from a really bad outing against his old team in Arizona, and he came into tonight’s game and cleared up Rob Scahill’s seventh inning mess without issue, then breezed through the eighth and ninth. The Pirates really needed a night like that from the ‘pen, and Schugel going 2 1/3 was as big as Locke making it through six.
The Pirates have won three of four and are back above .500 on this ten-game NL West road trip. It’s funny how one solid start from the fifth starter coupled with the perseverance required to make yesterday’s win possible makes the sky a little bit bluer, isn’t it?
Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images
