I guess they wouldn't be the Pirates if they didn't make us work for #82.
The most depressing series I've had the (dis)pleasure of taking in in a while. I made a special effort to watch all three games in full because I wanted to take in the beauty of the eighty-second win entirely if it was going to happen during the weekend, but it still hasn't happened. And things don't get any easier in Arlington.
A run down of the games:
6 September - Pirates 8 Cardinals 12 - The Pirate starters did not have a good weekend in St. Louie, with the Saturday starter Jeff Locke oddly having the best of the three starts.
On Friday, Burnett got knocked out after 3 innings, being constantly assaulted by doubles. The Cards drew first blood in the 1st on a Carlos Beltran single to center, which caught McCutchen awkwardly in between and bounced past him, allowing two runs to score and Beltran to advance to 2nd.
At the end of the third, the Cards were up 5-0. Kris Johnson quelled the flames a bit with 2 fine scoreless innings (he should have been left in longer, for sure).
A 5th inning Alvarez single made it 5-1, but then a ridiculous parade of crooked numbers followed starting in the 7th.
Jared Hughes continued his 2nd inning of relief but gave up a double, a bunt single, and an RBI double before leaving in favor of Bryan Morris. Morris gave up a single, double, single, then a homer. He was removed before recording an out. Mazzaro was brought in to stop the profusive bleeding; he gave up two more singles before the first out of the inning was recorded, a fly out by Daniel Descalso.
Nine consecutive hits for the Cardinals.
The score was now 12-1.
I turned the game off before the inning finished, and when I looked at the final score later that night, I was immensely surprised to see the Bucs made it to within 4. Granted, the Bucs' big innings were off the now ineffective John Axford and the now innefective Jake Westbrook. But still, it's something, a bit nice to see that it wasn't a blowout, though it wasn't exactly comforting.
7 September - Pirates 0 Cardinals 5 - Pretty sad to say this but this was the most enjoyable game to watch of the series. Yes, the Pirates got shut out. But it was against Wainwright, so offensive struggles were expected. What made it (a bit) fun to watch was to see how Jeff Locke would do. And though his final line wasn't stellar, 5 IP 3 R 2 ER 3 H 4 BB 4 Ks, it was a return to serviceability for him against a great lineup, and I also think he pitched better than his results showed.
For one thing, he navigated around a nasty error by the normally sure-handed Clint Barmes, and another, he was getting squeezed a lot all night, mostly on the right side of the plate. Locke was trying to place his fastball on the inside corner to righties, but Larry Vanover was just not giving him that strike.
This led to some talking back by Russell Martin (a bit of turning of the head, some words) and also Neil Walker when he came up to the plate in the bottom half (he got called for a strike on a borderline call that he felt Locke wasn’t getting).
Overall, a step in the right direction for Jeff Locke. The rest did him at least some good, and I'm hoping that he has some quality starts left in his bag for the year.
In the 4th inning the Bucs got “in business” with a double and a walk, but Marlon Byrd promptly grounded into a double play and with Cutch at third now Alvarez struck out swinging on Wainright’s tough curve. That was pretty much it for the offense that night. Pretty disappointing.
8 September - Pirates 2 Cardinals 9 - Morton got rocked as he has before against the Cardinals. Stolmy Pimentel was sub-par in relief. The offense could do nothing against Michael Wacha. That's pretty much all there is to know about this one.
A very disappointing and depressing series. It was a key one, since now the Cards are off to feast against sub .500 teams and we're gonna be battling the Rangers and Reds along with a couple favorable matchups of our own. There was also the fact that the Pirates looked totally lost, making very few threats at all that was particularly disheartening. I'm willing to chalk it up as a bad weekend against a good opponent, but the thing is at this point in the season you can't afford those kind of weekends. The Pirates are now just a couple bad games away from having their division hopes hang by a thread. They've completely eaten up their lead, and more.
The division race is of course still far from over, but now 1.5 games back of 1st and only a half-game up on the Reds, the Pirates have made it way harder on themselves to win the NL Central.
Ain't no rest for the wicked. On to Arlington.
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