Game 51: Pirates 4 Padres 1

In the first inning of this one, all I could think to myself was, "Well, this must be Tom Gorzelanny regresses to the mean night." He really struggled in the first, walking two batters, loading the bases, and needing 34 pitches to get three outs. It was painful to watch, and he didn't even give up a run. Clearly, we were going to need to bring the bats out tonight. And yet, we didn't have to. Gorzelanny buckled down and gave the Bucs seven strong innings and only allowed one run. He only walked one more batter the rest of the way, picking up his sixth win of the year. It was really an impressive start on all fronts, especially given the scary way that his last one ended, with him taking a liner off of his thumb and all.

As for the offense, well, it wasn't great but they did manage to chase David Wells after five innings. Jose Bautista continued to be a good leadoff guy by singling twice and scoring twice. It was a pretty well oiled machine early in the game. Bautista would single, Freddy would get a hit and eventually score, either on Freddy's hit or someone else's. After the Padres narrowed things down to 2-1, Jason Bay responded by homering off of Cla Meredith, which is not a particularly easy thing to do (only four homers allowed in 77 career innings before tonight). Bay is locked in right. Adam LaRoche also had three hits and knocked in one last insurance run late in the game tonight. He's now batting .218. Watch your ass, Ronny Paulino. The LaRoche train is coming.

The Pirates have now won four of five, with the only loss coming in Snell's start in the rotation. Go figure. With the Cubs loss tonight, the Pirates have assumed second place in the NL Central. That is insane. Mostly because we're five games under .500.