Just got finished listening to the Curve playoff game and my first thought was – why let Morris pitch? He came out of the pen without any command throwing 7 of his first 10 pitches as balls, and one of those was against a batter trying to sacrifice bunt. Moskos had just thrown a ten-pitch 9th so I would have let him come back out in the 10th myself.
But anyway.
The Curve lost much the same way the Pirates do – no situational hitting. Twice they had the bases loaded with one out or less, and both times they hit into double plays killing rallies. Another time we had runners at first and second with one out and failed to produce, and yet another time we had a leadoff single who was eventually stranded at.. get this.. first base.
Lots of OBA.. very little offensive clutch. That’s the bottom line story of the entire Pittsburgh Pirates system it seems.
Kudos to Rudy Owens for battling. He clearly wasn’t on his game.. he threw 87 pitches and obtained 9 swing and misses, but his velocity was down and the life on his stuff was pretty much average grade. He was aggressive early but then lost the edge it appeared and then battled the rest of the night. But isn’t that a sign of a good pitcher – to be able to take the mound without your best stuff and still keep your team in the game? Jared Hughes, pitching in relief of Owens, was filthy through two and battled the third inning he threw but did a good job none the less.
Now it’s not like the Trenton Thunder have a lot of pop in their lineup – they don’t. They have a couple of good hitters but not a lot of high contact guys and I think that fact alone led many to believe coming into this series the Curve had a good shot of taking home the title. But I thought the Thunder pitching was going to be hard to get passed, even with our better hitters. So far, that’s been the case.
Down 1 in a best of five series despite playing very good defense, the Curve will have to come back. We’ll see how resilient this group is.
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Zach Duke with a meltdown. How do you blame the guy? I mean, all week long the local media has championed the idea he’s a non-tender candidate and it probably got to his head. Well, let me back up.. he really hasn’t been much of a force this year anyway, but Tuesday night’s meltdown was a bit out of proportion even for him.
To me, he made one mistake in the second inning with the game 1-0 Mets at the time which let the entire game get away from him. He had runners on first and second with one out and a very weak swinging pitcher in Dickey at the plate. I was telling myself during the at bat that Duke had lost his mental approach because, to me, he should have allowed Dickey to put the ball in play on something low and in once he had two strikes on him instead of trying for the strikeout.
He didn’t do that – instead, Dickey indeed struckout and then the game unraveled and before it was all over, three more runs had scored.
The key was the batter on deck in Reyes who squared him up pretty good in the first and with reason – he carried a career .905 OPS into the game against Duke. Sure enough, he walked Reyes to get to Pagen who burned him with a well-struck liner to right Doumit had a hard time coming up with. But even though Pagen was erased at third, Duke was already beat mentally, and it showed. He took the mound in the third and in a dejected way, started to throw cookies and two of his pitches went over the wall in the inning. The fourth was no better until he was yanked.
Duke is a contact pitcher who needs to use that to his advantage, he didn’t do that with Dickey and it cost him dearly, but that’s been his problem a lot this year. He’s an emotional guy and if his defense lets him down, his body language shows it on the mound in the next batter or two. In this case, I think some of his flatness had more to do with the non-tender rumors. How could it not?
RA Dickey was tough to hit for our free-swinging group, as expected. Part of that was because we were out of the game early, but he was also throwing the ball well and deserves a hat tip too. I still think there is something in the background at that stadium that is preventing batters from picking the spin and location of the ball up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such ugly swings as I have the last two days. We’ll see if it continues Wednesday.
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The Bucs were down a considerable amount and the camera panned the Pirates bench while a lesser-known Pirates right-hand batter stepped up the plate. As far as I could see, not one eye on that bench was looking at the field of play except for one man.. Ryan Doumit who sat there alone passionately taking in every second of the game. The field staff weren’t looking, the players weren’t looking, nor were the trainers or other staff. Just Doumit.
What a statement.. what a gamer.
I dislike with a passion Doumit’s catching skills but I have to tell you, I think I’m beginning to dislike Snyder’s even more. Is that even possible?
Hat tip to Doumit.
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The 2011 MLB schedule evidently has been released as there is some talk circulating about it already. I thought this part was pretty funny myself:
“The Pirates will conclude the ’11 season by playing 10 of their final 13 games on the road.”
Probably a good thing, all things considered.
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Kyle Drabek makes his debut Wednesday night while our 666 pick (Brad Lincoln selected on the 6th day of the 6th month of 2006) is sitting on the pine after getting manhandled at this level and then blaming everyone else for his problems.
Original Story:
http://newbucs.com/2010/09/14/altoona...
