Pirates 6 Brewers 3 and Brewers 2 Pirates 1

Today was the tale of two pitchers, Ian Snell and Ben Sheets. Snell dominated the first game today (as apk suggests in the comments, he probably took it personally that Duke beat him by one single vote in the last poll) with 10 strikeouts in 7 innings to pick up his 13th win of the year. The offense was sparked by the top of the order, with Duffy scoring twice (with two hits), Freddy driving in two with three hits, Bay scoring twice, and Ronnie Paulino driving in 3 runs from the 5 slot.

With the series win wrapped up, Tracy went to his punchless lineup (aka the one without Jason Bay) to back Shawn Chacon, and a predictable outcome ensued, the Pirates lost. In a pleasant surprise, however, we didn't lose because of Shawn Chacon. Chacon turned in what had to be his finest outing of the season, going seven strong innings and allowing only 5 hits and 2 runs (both solo homers). For the second straight start, he struck out more than he walked (!) and threw an impressive 68 out of 104 pitches for strikes. Perhaps Colby is having a positive effect on Chacon, or perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle of his first few bad starts and his recent two good ones. Nothing Chacon could've done would've topped Ben Sheets today, though. Sheets put down the first 18 Pirates he faced and though he lost his perfect game to a Chris Duffy single in the bottom of the seventh had still faced only 21 batters through 7 (Duffy was picked off). Ryan Doumit managed to avoid the shutout by hitting a solo homer in the eighth, but that was all the Bucs would get (in terms of hits, runs, baserunners, etc.). Sheets ended up matching Snell's K total from earlier in the afternoon and saving the Brewers from the sweep.

In other interesting notes, Freddy used his 3-for-7 day (Tracy is obviously not letting the batting title interfere with his managing, I was shocked to see Freddy playing against Sheets in the second game, in which he went 0-for-3) to retain a one thousandth of a point lead over Cabrera in the batting race (.340 to .339, Freddy was as high as .343 after the first game). Duffy has his average up to .240, which doesn't really mean a lot but is impressive given his awful start. Snell has 159 strike outs on the year. Assuming he makes all his scheduled starts from here on out, he's got three more. That puts 200 out of reach, but he's probably going to get pretty close (he's only struck out less than five in a start twice since mid-July and 7 of his last 11 he's K'd six or more), which is a lot more than anyone could've expected from him before the year started. You'll also notice that from here on out, the posts are going to be labled, thanks to one of the upgrades Blogger is providing. As much as I'd like to, I don't have the time to go back and label all 1700+ posts I've done since last April, but I'll label everything from here on out, which should make browsing a little easier I suppose.