Pirates 3 Cubs 2
Oh, mother of all unexpected victories! Rich Hill has been dominant this year. When the Cubs gave him a 2-0 lead in the second inning, I assumed this one was over. I shut the radio off and got out the old History of Science reader and tried to do some studying with the gamecast open on my computer. In a bizarre twist of things, the Pirates actually had other plans.
Ryan Doumit, the current Baseball HayZeus of Pittsburgh, got things rolling in the fourth with a ground rule double, then was singled in by the current Baseball Goat of Pittsburgh, Adam LaRoche. He's got his average solidly over .100 right now, which sounds like a joke but really isn't because he was hitting .098 just a week ago. Anyways, that cut the lead in half. The rest of the job was done by a Ronnie Paulino double with Jose Bautista on first. Two runs off of Rich Hill? That's like 100 on a mortal pitcher!
That set the stage for Jason Bay to come through with some late inning heroics for the second time this year. With two outs in the bottom of the eighth, Bay launched Michael Wuertz's pitch just over the corner of the Clemente fence in right center for his 100th career homer and his fourth of the year. We took a ride on the Salomon Torres experience in the ninth and with Derrick Lee at the plate as the go-ahead run I flashed back to Jose Mesa in 2005 giving up a bomb to Lee in the ninth at PNC. Sully managed to avoid that by getting Lee to fly out to Chris Duffy in center on a play that gave Greg Brown an aneurysm and had me thinking it was the sweetest catch ever, but really was just a routine running catch. The Bucs are 12-12.
Ryan Doumit, the current Baseball HayZeus of Pittsburgh, got things rolling in the fourth with a ground rule double, then was singled in by the current Baseball Goat of Pittsburgh, Adam LaRoche. He's got his average solidly over .100 right now, which sounds like a joke but really isn't because he was hitting .098 just a week ago. Anyways, that cut the lead in half. The rest of the job was done by a Ronnie Paulino double with Jose Bautista on first. Two runs off of Rich Hill? That's like 100 on a mortal pitcher!
That set the stage for Jason Bay to come through with some late inning heroics for the second time this year. With two outs in the bottom of the eighth, Bay launched Michael Wuertz's pitch just over the corner of the Clemente fence in right center for his 100th career homer and his fourth of the year. We took a ride on the Salomon Torres experience in the ninth and with Derrick Lee at the plate as the go-ahead run I flashed back to Jose Mesa in 2005 giving up a bomb to Lee in the ninth at PNC. Sully managed to avoid that by getting Lee to fly out to Chris Duffy in center on a play that gave Greg Brown an aneurysm and had me thinking it was the sweetest catch ever, but really was just a routine running catch. The Bucs are 12-12.