Game 124: Rockies 9 Pirates 2

I don't know why the Pirates felt like keeping Tony Armas in the rotation was a good idea. It probably had something to do with the fact that he's right-handed and Dave Littlefield has always seemed to hate the idea of a predominantly left-handed rotation, which is what we'd have with Youman in the rotation with Gorzo and Maholm. Still, Armas sucks. After he got into trouble in the third and gave up the grand slam, Walkie (at least I think it was Bob Walk on the radio) fed the listeners some bullcrap line about how in Colorado you have to keep the starters in so the pen doesn't wear down. Armas gave up seven runs tonight because of that line of thinking. The Rockies? They pulled Dessens at the first sign of trouble in the fifth and stopped the bleeding and cruised to a win. They're 2.5 games out of the wild card, we get excited about 3 game winning streaks in August that get us to within 17 games of .500.