As well as the Pirates have been playing lately, the offense hasn’t really looked right for the better part of the last two weeks. These are the Pirates’ run totals in their last 11 games: 0, 1, 2, 1, 4, 1, 11, 3, 3, 3, 1. That’s only 19 runs in the ten games in which the Pirates didn’t score 11 runs, which is no good.
As such, seeing Max Scherzer line up against them is a scary proposition. We Pirate fans like to call Gerrit Cole the National League’s best pitcher thus far in 2015, but you can make a real strong case for Scherzer, too. Scherzer leads the NL in FIP thanks to a ridiculous 113:14 K:BB ratio, and he’s only allowed six homers to boot. He’s also dominated the Pirates in the recent past (see: here and here), which maybe isn’t surprising given how good the Pirates are at striking out and how good Scherzer is at striking people out. Francisco Liriano had better be on-point today.
First pitch is at 4:05.
Photo by Mike McGinnis/Getty Images
