If you wind the clock back a couple weeks, the Pirates have not had a whole lot of easy baseball recently. They got swept by the Nationals, played some stressful baseball against the Reds and Braves, and then had last night’s 14-inning marathon. The bats have been troublingly absent on a lot of nights, the starters have faded, etc. It’s hard to say the Pirates have played poorly outside of the Nationals’ series, but it’s been stressful to watch on most nights.
That makes this sort of win even more fun. Neil Walker kicked off a five-run third-inning rally with a game-swinging two-run homer (the Tigers were up 1-0 at that point) and the hit parade was on from there. Extra base hits from there in sequential order: Pedro Alvarez ground-rule double, Starling Marte double, Gregory Polanco double, Neil Walker homer (again), Starling Marte homer, and Pedro Alvarez homer. Those nine runs were plenty for AJ Burnett and company, as Burnett gave the Pirates seven badly needed innings (two runs, seven hits, four strikeouts, no walks) and Jared Hughes and Arquimedes Caminero closed things out without too much issue, beyond the homer Caminero served up to James McCann.
Neil Walker’s bat has been a gaping hole in this lineup thus far in 2015 — it’s one thing for the Pirates to absorb a Josh Harrison return to orbit (which was expected) and Jung Ho Kang and Francisco Cervelli have done a bit to mitigate Harrison and Jordy Mercer and Gregory Polanco’s struggles, but it’s hard for the Pirates to absorb all those disappointing or regressing seasons along with the disappearance of their cleanup hitter from last year. There are a lot of things the Pirates can do to get better in the second part of this 2015 season, and having Neil Walker return to 2014 form is pretty high on that list. Let’s hope these last two nights are the start of something.
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