Game 2: Pirates 3 Astros 2

First things first. Fanhouse recap here. Fanhouse post about Kip Wells here. I won't recap every Pirate game for the Fanhouse, but since this was a division game and the Astros pen melted down again, I couldn't really ignore it. I will, however, recap every Pirate game here, whether I do a Fanhouse recap or not.

I think we can say that the Ian Snell Insult Game was a rousing success for tonight. Big ups to Humbucker for being the only person secure enough in his nerdiness to not only recognize that tonight's insult was a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quote, but that it came from Wowbagger the Inifintely Prolonged. Mach Snell (if you're unaware, that's Azibuck's brilliant fantasy baseball team name this year) was flat out dominant tonight, whiffing 11 clueless Astro batters over six innings while only allowing 2 runs on 4 hits and only one (intentional) walk. He threw his fastball from 93-95 all night on the FSP gun and showing pretty good control on his off-speed stuff. He got beaten on a Jason Lane homer and on a 2 strike pitch to Carlos Lee that he tried to bust Lee in on the hands with but just didn't get far enough inside. Hard to complain about anything from this start, though.

At the plate, the star was Weapon X once again. I don't know if it's his adamantium bones or what, but after his monstrous blast in the second inning today, he's hit only one fewer home run than he hit in his entire August and September stretch with the Buccos last year. The man is locked in right now. Still, Jason Jennings was almost (but not quite) as good as Ian Snell and shut the Bucs down through six innings. I was shocked to see Garner bring out Chad Qualls in the seventh and Dan Wheeler in the eighth, because it meant that he was probably going to use Lidge for the ninth. He never got the chance as Wheeler gave up a bunt single to Wilson and walked Bay to set the table for one of the most frustrating, then rewarding at bats for Ronnie Paulino after Adam LaRoche made an out. Paulino stared at both strike one and strike two that were both on silver platters. Instead he chose a letter high hanging slider to bang out over Adam Everett's head for a game tying single. The unstoppable Nady came up next and blooped a single to bring Bay home and put the Bucs ahead for good. It wasn't a pretty rally, but we'll take it.

Also- I want to chastise everyone who told me to not bitch about keeping Don Kelly and John Wasdin on the roster and that it didn't matter because they would never see the light of day in a close game. As Douglas Adams once said, "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." After the Kelly incident yesterday, Tracy brought Wasdin into the game in the 7th with the Pirates down by 1 run. Wasdin tried to screw things up, but Tracy pulled his head out of his ass pretty quickly. Of course then he brought Juan Perez in and that didn't help things at all. Jonah Bayliss cleaned up the mess though and disaster was avoided. Matt Capps then did his strike throwing, out getting thing and Torres finished things up to stay on pace for 162 saves.

A series win in Houston to open the season. Talk about unexpected.