A funny thing happened last night: completely overwhelmed with the second straight night of very-late-night-baseball, I fell asleep while the Pirates were batting in the eighth inning and holding a 4-1 lead, but wasn’t worried at all about the outcome of the game when I woke up this morning.
The Pirates weren’t really at their best last night. They dinged Jesse Hahn for four runs, but all four came off of two two-run homers (which, as Tom Singer noted during the game, is twice as many as Hahn allowed in his whole minor league career). They couldn’t do anything at all with veteran outfielder-turned-pitcher Jason Lane (he played for the Astros in the mid-2000s and hasn’t seen an MLB game since 2007) or the rest of the Padres’ bullpen. Similarly, Gerrit Cole looked a lot like Charlie Morton on Monday night; he dominated early, threw a ton of pitches, and ran out of gas before he had a chance to put a really dominating start together. That was fine, since Jared Hughes, Tony Watson, Mark Melancon, and Jason Grilli (maybe this is just because I’ve spent most of my time at work listening to “The History of Rome” podcast, but I’m thinking htat maybe The Tetrarchy is a better nickname for them than “The Shark Tank”) slammed the door shut in the Padres’ faces.
The Pirates have won four in a row, and suddenly they’re 28-30. They are officially back in the pack. There’s no time to slow down now, though.
