Game 17: Pirates 7 Dodgers 5

Nothing's easy for this squad, is it? I managed to avoid my own advice and after an afternoon of meandering around Pittsburgh on foot, was back in my apartment by game time. For the second straight night, Chris Duffy got on to lead off the game and managed to scare the bejesus out of every Dodger on the field so that he could kind of just skip around the base paths and score. He went 3-for-5 today and scored three runs. I continued to be impressed with his play.

The rest of this one was like a roller coaster, get a three run lead, blow it, get a four run lead, try as hard as possible to blow it, squeak out a win. BP Chacon was ineffective for the second straight day after I said I would feel comfortable with him in the bullpen. Damaso Marte is so terrifying that I literally walked out of my room and went to Subway when he came into the game because I couldn't physically watch our pen blow another game. Salomon Torres? I don't know if I'll ever trust him in a game ever again after the past two weeks.

Still, I suppose we should talk about positives in this one as well, since we won and all. Tom Gorzelanny is very good. When you think about it, it's practically miraculous that he's 3-0 right now (and would be 4-0 if not for Torres' first meltdown against the Cards) with our offense. Speaking of which, hey, they stepped up today and scored seven runs. Bay doubled in what turned out to be two big runs, LaRoche homered and got his average over .100, and Duffy had a big game, as mentioned. Somehow, we're still 7-10 at this point. I think I'll write more about that tomorrow.