It wasn’t as easy as it should’ve been and it wasn’t all that pretty, but the Pirates managed to escape St. Louis last night with their first win since July of 2014.
To be perfectly honest, my main concern with last night was Francisco Liriano. That being said, seeing the Pirates explode for seven first inning runs and destroy Lance Lynn with a barrage of hits starting with Neil Walker’s triple off of Lynn and only ending when Lynn was pulled a full turn of the lineup later was pretty awesome. This is the ultimate frustration with these Pirates in games on the road against the NL Central this year; we know what they’re capable of, because we’ve seen it. Still, as responses to two frustrating losses in winnable games against your biggest rival go, this was pretty spectacular. A quick rundown of the first inning carnage:
- Walker tripled off of Lance Lynn, and scored on Andrew McCutchen’s double.
- Jung Ho Kang brought McCutchen home by hitting the ball to Matt Carpenter and having Carpenter do his best Pedro Alvarez impression.
- Kang scored when Pedro Alvarez destroyed a ball well onto the batter’s eye in dead center.
- Francisco Cervelli and Travis Ishikawa started things back up with an HBP and single, respectively.
- After a Sean Rodriguez strikeout, Francisco Liriano singled in Cervelli — his fourth RBI in the last two games!
- Gregory Polanco singled in Ishikawa.
- Tyler Lyons replaced Lance Lynn and served up a single to walker, bringing home Liriano for his career-high second run scored this year.
Staked out to that lead, Liriano was fine. He made it through six innings on 94 pitches, which is awfully economical by his standards, and was able to put four straight zeros up in the second, third, and fourth innings after the Cardinals got two back in the bottom of the first. It wasn’t his best start by any means, but given how little he’s actually pitched lately, a little bit of rust is understandable. His control wasn’t great (he walked four batters), but really, six solid innings is something the Pirates needed desperately after this recent stretch by the rotation and it’s all you can really ask for when you score seven runs in the first inning.
Of course, nothing is ever that easy. When Liriano departed with a 7-3 lead, Clint Hurdle elected to go to his Soria/Watson/Melancon triumvirate, which is understandable given the way the Pirates have played against the Cardinals this year and the relative importance of this game to the Pirates’ remaining slim hopes of winning the NL Central. Soria has looked a bit flat as a Pirate to my eyes, though, and he was flat-out bad last night, giving up three hits and a walk while only recording one out. Luckily, the Pirates have Tony Watson. Watson came in and got Yadier Molina to fly out with the bases loaded, bringing the score to 7-5, then struck Kolten Wong out on four pitches. He then pitched a flawless eighth, the Pirates added three insurance runs in the top of the ninth, and now the Pirates have a road win in St. Louis. The five-run win is the biggest margin of victory in the 13 games the two teams have played this year, which is a relatively meaningless thing but is nice to keep in your pocket just for fun.
There are 50 games left in the 2015 season. The Pirates are six games behind the Cardinals. The Pirates play the Cardinals six more times. I still think the Pirates need to get their house in order with this starting rotation, but this win means that there’s still a glimmer of hope of taking the NL Central if they can manage to do that. Obviously it’s a long shot at this point, but it’s not nothing.
Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images
