Thursday, May 08, 2008

Game 34: Pirates 5 Giants 4

Currently the Pirates have two of the top six players in the league, as measured by total win shares. This is, to say the least, a rather unexpected development. Even more unexpected is that Jason Bay and Adam LaRoche are exactly neither of those two players (who are Nate McLouth and Xavier Nady, of course). That's even more surprising, as most people would've likely qualified Bay and LaRoche as the Pirates' two best hitters. What made today's win especially nice was that it came on the back of two big hits by Bay and LaRoche in the seventh inning, helping the Pirates to turn a 4-2 deficit into a 5-4 win.

It's really hard to get excited over a sweep against the Giants, but it's always nice to see the Pirates pull out a win in a game that feels lost. Matt Cain was really good through six today, but Bruce Bochy probably stuck with him an inning too long and the Pirates actually managed to take advantage of that. The soon to be demoted Nyjer Morgan reached on a bunt single, Freddy hit a ground rule double, McLouth hit a sac fly, Bay picked up his third hit of the day and doubled Freddy in. After a pitching change and a couple more batters, LaRoche singled Bay in and gave the Pirates the lead, which the bullpen did a nice job of holding on to. The win brings the Pirates to a not-embarrassing 15-19 record on the year, which is pretty surprising given the way most of this season has gone. We'll see if I feel the same way on Sunday after the Braves roll through town.