For much of the first half of baseball’s season, I tend to obsess over what the Pirates’ wins and losses look like. Are the Pirates winning close games against bad teams and getting blown out by good ones? Are they blowing leads late in games they could otherwise win? Are their wins blowouts and their losses close? All of this matters early on in the season, because the games are building an impression of a team, and there aren’t enough games to judge solely by win/loss record.
Now that August is ending, that all matters less. We know the Pirates are very good, all that matters now is the win/loss column. It doesn’t matter that Friday night’s win against the Rockies required a laser throw from Gregory Polanco and a late rally because Francisco Liriano and the bullpen couldn’t hold early leads. It doesn’t matter that Mark Melancon melted down last night and needed an unassisted double play from Josh Harrison to send everyone home happy. The Pirates played a bad Rockies team twice, they beat them twice, and they made up a game on the Cardinals in the process. They’re 30 (!) games over .500 now, with a chance to sweep the Rockies and maybe make up another game on the Cardinals it he process.
Charlie Morton starts for the Pirates. He had been pitching very well before pitching relatively poorly against the Marlins earlier this week. A strong start today would give him a pretty solid August, though, which is pretty good timing given the Pirates’ pitching situation at the beginning of the month. The Rockies will start Jorge de la Rosa, who is the millionth lefty the Pirates have faced this week. The Pirates will sit Jung Ho Kang for the third time this week, which seems unconscionable to me. I do think I understand what Clint Hurdle is doing this week. Jordy Mercer crushes lefties and Aramis Ramirez has generally been a lefty-masher over the course of his career, so it makes sense to get them ABs against lefties. Kang, meanwhile, is playing his first season of MLB ball, which means an extra month’s worth of games and an insane amount of travel compared to the KBO, so some rest is not out of order. It is particularly not out of line against the Marlins and Rockies, who are terrible. Even with all of that said, it seems crazy to me to see so many lineups this week without the guy that’s been the National League’s sixth best hitter since the All-Star Break. The Pirates’ tear through the NL’s best teams this month doesn’t happen without Kang, and Josh Harrison and Aramis Ramirez should not be getting regular at-bats if it costs Kang at-bats. It’ll be interesting to see how Hurdle handles this infield rotation going forward, I guess.
First pitch today is at 1:35.
Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
