Thursday, June 01, 2006

Pirates 4 Brewers 3

Get out the brooms! This win is at least equally as impressive as the three blowouts we levied on the Brewers to open this series. Maholm had a very nice start, going 7 innings and scattering 8 hits while only allowing 2 runs. He was good enough that when Gamecast showed Hernandez on the mound in the 8th I thought to myself "Why? Only 87 pitches for Maholm... I don't know if I like this." Carlos Lee liked it enough to launch a ball into the stands for a 3-2 Milwaukee lead. Heading into the bottom of the 9th, that lead still stood while all the Pirates had to show for anything all day where two Freddy Sanchez singles (of course, everything he puts into play ends up a hit it seems), a Burnitz double, 2 Jose Castillo sac flies, and a Jose Bautista pinch hit single (that lead to nothing). With Derrick Turnbow, redneck Pirate killer, on the mound, it certainly seemed this one was over. Then Burntiz doubled and pinch runner Hernandez moved to third on Freddy's ground out. Castillo ripped an almost walkoff homer that ended up a game tying double. He was then quickly scored by Doumit's game winning single. Just a great win, one that the baseball gods owed us after some of those games early in the season.

I think we can officially lump Burnitz into the group of people that are "killing the ball." It pains me to say this, but as Craig Wilson is as likely to be back next year as Burnitz, as long as one of the two of them is hitting, it's not really fair to complain. I don't know what's gotten into Castillo. I did see X3 over the weekend, which leads me to believe that perhaps Jose touched Jason Bay without his batting gloves on and absorbed his power earlier in the week. Today he accounted for three RBIs and scored the fourth run himself. The man isn't on fire, he's unstoppable. And of course, Doumit came through big again despite only playing once a week. And amazingly (SARCASM ALERT), Maholm managed to pitch well even without Ronnie Paulino behind the plate. While I don't have the stats, Doumit's cERA while catching Duke and Maholm is likely much better than Paulino's since he caught them when they were practically untouchable at the end of last year (END SARCASM). In all seriousness, we need to get Doumit's bat into the game more often, end of story. And we need to keep winning, too. Things are way more fun this way.