Cards 5 Pirates 4

I mostly cared about Snell tonight above everything else, though Furmaniak making his debut was an interesting byline (mostly as I thought he was traded for to win Indy an IL title, but Littlefield showed cynical old me, now didn't he). Anyways, Jack was out with a sore back again and Furmaniak came up to play second. Snell was... interesting. He threw hard most of the time and apparently has a knack for charity (tonight FSN was giving money to hurricane relief for every homer hit). Unfortunately the hitters tonight knew his weakness was his offspeed stuff (Molina whacked a hanging something about a mile and a half) and just waited on it. Still, he had 6 Ks in four innings and seemed to settle down after the early homers. Hopefully he gets a couple more starts before the season ends.

I was pleasantly surprised to see us not roll over and die with Carpenter on the mound. Doumit's homer kind of got the ball rolling and the rally in the 7th was night. We might also be able to declare Mike Gonzalez "back" after his performance on Sunday and tonight. He took six pitches to strike out the first two batters in the 8th and only 14 to K the entire side. Unfortunately, Rick White is still in the pen. Actually, the two hardest hit balls he gave up tonight turned into outs. He then gave up a seeing eye single, an intentional walk (after a stolen base) and a little flare from Eckstein to bring in the winning run. It would've been great to see a win, but being numb to all of the losing at this point at least we can say they tried against the best pitcher in the NL tonight.