Pirates 12 Brewers 1

Seriously, who are these guys in Pirates uniforms? They killed the ball again tonight, with Castillo and Freddy leading the charge with four hits and every starter minus the evil Craig Wilson chipping in at least one hit (Jack had three more as well). Castillo's four hits included two homers; the second of which was one of the longest I've ever seen in person at PNC as it hit off the bottom of the third level of the rotunda, if I'm remembering correctly. That clocked in at a whopping 441 feet, just an absolute mammoth of a homer. Oddly enough, in the 7 games I've been to this year (for a 5-2 record), Castillo, Bay, and Craig Wilson have all had multiple homer games. Victor Santos even did a good impression of a major league pitcher tonight, leaving me and my friend sitting in the bleachers in the fifth inning wondering if the scorer chaning an obvious Freddy Sanchez error in the first to a single for Rickie Weeks would cause Santos to lose his no hitter and we were only half kidding (though the box scores I'm seeing still have Sanchez down for the error so maybe it was a scoreboard error). Still, Tracy did well to hook Santos after six, as he was clearly starting to struggle in that inning.

There is one other thing that should be noted in the wake of the 26-4 shellacking we've put on the Brewers the last two days... the Brew Crew is playing some awful baseball. The last two nights I think they've handed us at least 15 of those 26 runs with terrible defense that just isn't showing up on the scoresheet. They seem to boot every sharply hit grounder, make bad throws to every base, take bad routes to the balls in the outfield, everything you'd expect out of the Pirates. They've also trotted out an incredibly pathetic crew of pitchers after Doug Davis left the mound yesterday. Joe Winkelsas? Chris Mabeus? I don't even know who those two are. I vaguely know who Brian Shouse is (apparently he pitched for us in '93), but he seriously looks like he's just standing on the mound playing underhanded catch with the catcher, no kick, no push, nothing. I love to see us crush the other team as much as anyone, but these Brewers are painful to watch.

UPDATE: For anyone that hasn't caught it, there's my best guess at where Castillo's homer bounced off the facade of the rotunda. I'm almost positive that it hit off the bottom of the third level, as insane as that sounds, and it kind of sliced around behind the foul pole, though it may be a little closer to the vertical support near center. I'm sure you get the idea. FSP decided to run "This Week In Pirates Baseball" instead of PST at 1 so I couldn't catch the highlights then, but if I do see a highlight that suggests the ball landed otherwise, I'll update this.