If the Pirates are going to keep winning games at a quick pace in the last part of this 2015 season, I suspect that quite a few of the wins will resemble this one. The Pirates were able to build a nice lead early on against Dan Haren, thanks to homers from Gregory Polanco and Andrew McCutchen, they were able to bounce back from the Cubs tying the game up at four with a sixth inning rally, and the bullpen was able to shut down the game in the last three innings after the Pirates got the lead back. The starting rotation got the Pirates a long way, and I think the offense and bullpen is going to have to carry it the rest of the way.
Polanco was the big star in this one, as we continue to get a taste of what the Pirate offense is capable of when he’s hitting. He lead the game off with this fifth home run of the year, and he gave the Pirates the lead back for good in the sixth inning with a single that followed Francisco Cervelli and Mike Morse singles. The hit came off of Travis Wood, a lefty. That’s his second big hit off of a lefty in the last week or so (his bases loaded double that broke last Tuesday’s win against the Twins open was off of a lefty), and maybe this is something that will become less noticeable as his bat heats up. Cervelli also had a nice game at the plate; in addition to his single that started the sixth inning rally, he tripled in the eighth and scored an insurance run for the Bucs.
On the other side of things, Jeff Locke looked pretty solid in the early part of the game, but everything came apart pretty quickly for him in the sixth inning. After walking Dexter Fowler, he served up a homer to Kyle Schwarber to cut the Pirates’ lead to 4-3, then two batters later he gave up another one to Anthony Rizzo. This is, unfortunately, the sort of thing that the Cubs are going to be very good at with Schwarber and Rizzo and Kris Bryant all in the lineup. Locke was replaced by Jared Hughes after Rizzo’s homer, but Hughes got himself into trouble quickly and needed to be bailed out by Antonio Bastardo. The good news from there was that the Pirates got the lead right back, which let them turn the game over to Joakim Soria, Tony Watson, and Mark Melancon. Soria and Watson cruised, with Soria notching two strikeouts in a perfect inning. Melancon had a bit more trouble (he gave up his first run since, no joke, June 5th and his first earned run since, still no joke, May 11th), but the Pirates handed him a big enough lead to make it a non-issue.
This win was actually pretty big one: the Pirates maintain the four-game lead over the Cubs that they brought into this series, and since the Cubs are the first team out of the playoffs right now, that four-game cushion is the Pirates’ current playoff cushion. Anything less than that would feel awfully uncomfortable pretty quickly.
Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images
