Game 37: Pirates 7 Marlins 0

I spend a lot of time being negative. I don't do it for the sake of being negative, it's just who I am. By nature, I am a pretty cynical guy. When it comes to the Pirates, that leads to a lot of snarkiness on my part. It's just how it goes. That being said, let me be positive here for a moment. Tom Gorzelanny has surpassed my wildest expectations in 2007. This is coming from a guy that defended Gorzo more than most after his rough spring (at least I think I did, you can troll the archives and tell me I'm a moron if I'm wrong). He was just great tonight against a very good offensive club in the Marlins, going seven shutout innings allowing only five hits. He struck out five and didn't walk anyone. After talk all spring about how we didn't have a rotation with any aces and it was hard to separate the four young starters, Snell and Gorzo have completely separate themselves from Duke and Maholm. Gorzo hasn't been as good as Snell to this point in the year (Snell has struck out more batters) but he's been very very good and tonight was another step in the right direction.

But that wasn't all that was encouraging tonight. Ronny Paulino hit a homer and walked three times. Dejan keeps saying that he thinks Paulino will break out of his funk and who knows, maybe his benching on his own bobblehead night will catalyze that. The best part about tonight was sitting around thinking "I don't know if this 2-0 lead will cut it" and watching the offense pour five runs across in the eighth inning. The Marlins made some mistakes and we catalyzed on them. That's just good baseball there. Hard to believe it, huh?