Game 36: Pirates 5 Braves 2

First off, Jason Michaels was 3/4 last night and that's good for him and I was happy that he didn't completely suck in his first game in black and gold. But that doesn't make it OK for the Pirates to bench McLouth every time they face a lefty. Nate's not mashing lefties the same way he is righties, but a .291/.371/.491 line is perfectly acceptable and in fact, it's probably in line with what most of us expect out of him for the full season. I'll buy that he needed a night off last night, but he doesn't need regular nights off and if this happens again relatively soon, it'll be something worth getting pissed over.

That said, even with the Pirates, a win's a win and we've now rolled up five of them in a row. Gorzelanny had a pretty decent outing last night, going seven and a third with four Ks and two walks with his two earned runs allowed but none after Teixeira's homer in the first, and Bay and Michaels provided a nice chunk of offense, with five hits and four of our five runs scored between them. Bay hit his seventh homer in the fourth to put the Pirates up for good, and even Ronny Ballgame knocked in three runs.

The win puts us at 17-19, which means that that good old false hope is swelling up in a lot of people right now. Interestingly enough, out Pythagorean win/loss is also 17-19, due to the fact that we've actually scored a decent amount of runs this year. That means that the numbers say that despite our long, ugly stretches of baseball, our record actually decently describes the way we've played so far. Raise your hand if you saw that one coming.