I do, from time to time, like to dabble in creative writing. Sometimes that makes its way to WHYGAVS in the fashion of an offbeat post, but more often than not I end up keeping it to myself (maybe someday I’ll post the short story I wrote for my fiction class at Duquesne about the relationship between an aging baseball player and his cynical fans). I mention this because the Pirates have been done playing for nearly eight hours now and I haven’t posted a recap.
The reason for that is simple; at some point, I run out of things to say about the typical Pittsburgh Pirate loss. I mean, how many times have we heard this story before:
- Starting Pitcher X made a decent start, but ran out of gas.
- The offense had some chances early, but failed to capitalize.
- The Pirates lost.
On the plus side, Kevin Hart did make what’s undoubtedly his best start as a Pirate. His fastball averaged 92 and hit almost 95, he struck out five but only walked one, he got 64 of 97 across the plate, and Vin Scully marveled about his first pitch strikes this afternoon. That’s not good for much since we didn’t win, but it does mean that this one’s mentally noted for the Kevin Hart PitchFX post that we all know is coming when the season ends.
Of course, the offense did nothing for him. Andrew McCutchen singled in the fifth inning for the Pirates’ sixth hit off of Hiroki Kuroda, and then the next 13 Pirates went down quietly and in order. Perhaps most impressively, the Pirates didn’t draw one walk in the entire game. More than anything, our ridiculous lack of plate patience is going to have to improve before 2010 turns into a ridiculous, post-apocalyptic nightmare for both Pirate fans and players.
