Game 67: Pirates 4 White Sox 2

Remember two days ago when Jose Castillo was hitting the ball well and I said that while it was encouraging to see, I wanted to see him do it against a team that wasn't as pitching poor as the Rangers? Replace Jose Castillo with Paul Maholm, hitting the ball with pitching, pitching poor with hitting poor, and Rangers with White Sox and you've got the basic outline for this recap. It's not that I'm not impressed with Maholm's outing tonight, it's just that the White Sox are really freaking bad.

Fellow Fanhouser and Foul Balls editor Tom Fornelli is a White Sox fan. This afternoon he pointed out to me that not only do the White Sox have a much worse OBP than the Pirates and not only have they scored 30some runs less than the Buccos, they've done it in the DH league. That is some bad offense.

And yet, you can never take a seven-inning, six-strikeout start from Paul Maholm for granted. Forgive me for being glib, but sometimes it takes him two starts to get those numbers. Matt Capps scared the bejesus out of everyone in the ninth tonight by hitting one guy and walking two guys, but he was also reaching back for 96 mph and managed to only give up one run to close out the save. And Jack Wilson rebooted his season with a nice play at short and two hits. I'll set his next tank date at July 17th.

All in all, it was a nice win for the Pirates, who have now inexplicably won three out of four. I know it's three out of four against bad teams, but hey, we're a bad team too. That excuse doesn't count.