Thursday, April 19, 2007

Game 13: Brewers 7 Pirates 3

DISCLAIMER: I'm going to treat this like the close game that it was before Wayback Wasdin screwed everything up in the seventh inning. He shouldn't be on the team, but that goes without being said.

Holy crap. I thought the "bases loaded, no out, three straight strikeouts" thing was kind of once in a lifetime. Or at least once in a decade. I was wrong. It's a once a year thing. At least. So yeah, I'm kinda bummed about that. Or something.

As for the rest of the game, I'll admit I was kind of distracted after the whole bases loaded thing. Just hard to watch and feel like a team is going to win a game when they do something like that. Bay finally looks like he might be getting untracked (and about on schedule, he's not an April hitter at all) with three hits tonight including his third homer. Duffy also created a run by singling, moving to second on a bad pickoff throw to first, then scoring from second on a bad pickoff throw to second and a bad throw back in from center. This is why him drawing walks and getting on base is important, but you knew that already.

That was about it for the offense, though. Bay and Duff combined for 5 of the Bucs seven hits. That doesn't lend itself to a ton of runs. Bay and Duffy also combined for some ugly outfield play when Duffy called Bay off, then Bay backed off too late and the ball dropped between them. Lucky for them, Jose Bautista played some Brooks Robinson at third and speared a hot shot down the line and completed the double play to first.

Seriously though, I don't care if a team is 6-6 or 2-10 or 12-0, not scoring with the bases loaded and no outs is ridiculous. And striking out three times... how does that happen (against Claudio Freaking Vargas!) It probably cost us the game tonight, and it's been costing us a while, because this is exactly what the Stats Geek was talking about earlier this week. We just need more hits.