Game 112: Pirates 8 Giants 7

You know what? I do not understand the Pittsburgh Pirates. At all. I have followed this team since I was five years old and I have written a blog about them for well over two years. Actually, I've written over 1000 pages on this blog about them. You might say that I've tried harder to understand the Pirates than I have tried to understand anything else in my life, besides maybe (maybe) one of the projects I spent a summer researching. And yet despite all that, I never see nights like tonight coming.

Somehow, the Pirates decided that after being made to look stupid by Russ Ortiz (again!) and finding themselves in a 6-2 hole against one of the crappier teams in baseball, that maybe it was time to turn the gas on. And so they got six hits in the eighth inning and scored six runs and ended up winning a game that they most certainly should've lost. After a whole year of moribund baseball, especially in the past month, why now? Maybe it was more Giants than Pirates.

I have mostly negative things to say about this game. This is probably because I planned for seevn innings to write a loss recap. Matt Morris really sucks. He was brutal tonight, allowing 12 base runners in six innings. He fooled Barry Bonds badly on a 3-2 curveball, but Bonds still hit the pitch out of the park. Five years ago I would've said that was all Bonds. Now I'm not so sure. By contrast, Rajai Davis looks like a different baseball player in black and orange (well, at the plate anyways, his attempt to catch Ryan Doumit's "triple" was one of the funniest things I think I've ever seen). He also scored from third on a sac fly to Jason Bay that lead to the SF announcers (remember, I have to watch on MLB.tv now) going, "You have to be fast to beat Jason Bay home. He's got one of the best assist arms in the National League." LOL. Davis is probably just going through the "Chris Duffy in August" phase of his career, but I'd take that over five walks and no strikeouts in six innings. How is that better than Van Benschoten?

At least the offense clicked tonight with LaRoche, Doumit, McLouth, and Paulino all chipping in a couple hits. That rally in the eighth would've been downright inspiring if I wasn't so bitter and jaded and if it didn't come against the Giants. Oh well.