One of my favorite things to be able to do when the Pirates are playing well is to look at a matchup before a game starts, say, “Man, this pitcher sure is giving up a lot of home runs; the Pirates should be able to take advantage of that,” and then watch them go out and do it. Jung Ho Kang absolutely crushed a three-run homer off of Ian Kennedy in the first inning, then Gregory Polanco hit one maybe a little bit harder in the second, and Starling Marte added a two-run homer in the third. The Pirates added a seventh run in the fourth inning on an Andrew McCutchen double, and that more or less ended the game.
Of course, the Padres did rally back some, through a combination of Petco Park suddenly being a pitcher’s park (I guess there’s a building that’s blocking the wind now, or something? I dunno, seems shaky to me and that’s my official position as a scientist) and hilariously bad Pirate defense, but after the Padres put up two in the fourth and fifth, the Pirates strung together some hits to go with some Padre errors to score four more runs, and that’s how they got to 11. That was plenty, even though Burnett had his worst outing of the year and couldn’t get out of the sixth inning.
There are plenty of offensive stars in this one: Josh Harrison had two hits, including an RBI double, and he scored once. Neil Walker had three hits and scored twice. Andrew McCutchen had the two RBI doubles, a single, and he scored twice. Marte, Kang, and Polanco all went yard with impressive home runs. Polanco had another hit, and Francisco Cervelli had three singles and scored twice. This is the sort of game that I think the most optimistic of us envisioned when talking about the ceiling on this Pirate offense before the season began: the leadoff hitter had two hits, the eight hitter had three hits, and there were three players with multi-hit games in between. This wasn’t just a homer-driven performance by the Pirate offense; it was a relentless assault by the entire lineup for the first six innings of this game. Frankly, I think the offense owed AJ Burnett this one after wasting a few excellent starts by him earlier in the year.
The Pirates have won seven in a row. The Cardinals and Cubs were both off, so they’re now within a half-game of the Cubs and within six of the Cardinals. They’ll go for eight tomorrow night.
Photo by Denis Poroy/Getty Images
