Dodgers 13 Pirates 5

To open with, I figured a split would be a good outcome in this series. Coming back from a 1-7 start won't be a quick process, and this team is currently not ready to take much more than baby-steps forward. Still, losing 13-5 always sucks, especially when Ollie makes a bad start. I tried to get the game on the radio in my lab today, but the only radio we have in there doesn't really get much in the way of AM stations, and I couldn't even get it to pull in KDKA on the third floor of a building on the top of a hill in Pittsburgh. Thus, I spent most of my afternoon huddled around the GameCast trying to figure out what was going on with Ollie. Someone who watched/listened can correct me, but it seemed like a bizarre outing for Perez. He seemed to switch from having great control to none at all, and it seemed to happen almost batter by batter, like certain batters just terrifed him. He threw almost 60% of his pitches for strikes today, so I don't think he was quite as wild as the 5 walks in less than 5 innings would indicate. The GameCast didn't have velocity, so I'll assume that it stayed just about where it's been this year (high 80s to low 90s). So I suppose what I'm saying is that he's still a giant question mark (big surprise).

I think this was a good series for the Buccos, especially given the way the season started. We saw some bad pitching and we absolutely preyed on it. Craig and Freddy got a lot of ABs, and I think they made sure that they're going to get their share of them as the season goes on. Next up we have the Cubs coming into town and I hate losing to a manager who likes to think that Nefi Perez is an every day player. I'd say the goal for this series is to play some games where we don't have to start the game down 3-0. That means it's on Santos, Duke, and Snell to get us some good starts.