For two months, Pirates pitchers have been rationalizing their offensive brothers' quiet by citing baseball's see-saw. There will be days, they said, when the pitcher doesn't have it and will have to be picked up by the hitters.
As A.J. Burnett said a few days ago in a moment of extreme hyperbole, "We'll have games where we give up an eight-spot, and [our hitters will] come up with nine."
The pitchers haven't had many of those days. Maybe Charlie Morton wanted to give that theory a try on Tuesday. Not a good idea. And not a good night. The game wasn't any better than the weather that had delayed it, and the Bucs couldn't do anything about either.
They couldn't out-hit a late (1-hour, 54-minute rain delayed), staggering start by Morton, who lasted only the first four innings of the 8-1 loss to Cincinnati at PNC Park.
The only possibly memorable part of it was the Major League debut of Jordy Mercer, which lasted all of two pitches. As an eighth-inning pinch-hitter, he grounded out on an 0-1 pitch from the Reds' Homer Bailey.
Morton had a lot of relief accomplices as the Bucs' four-game winning streak came to a crashing halt, but he unwittingly set the tone for the late evening.
He couldn't reprise his 2011 form against the Reds (3-0 with an 0.93 ERA), but his mound foe stayed true to his history with the Pirates. Bailey brought a lifetime 5-0 record and 1.94 ERA in seven starts against them to work, and put in a complete-game shift. Just to be an even bigger nuisance, Bailey also went 2-for-3 with an RBI at bat.
The Pirates could get to Bailey only in the fifth, on three consecutive one-out singles by Matt Hague, Rod Barajas and pinch-hitter Casey McGehee. The run-scoring hit improved McGehee in the pinch to 4-for-8, with a pair of RBIs; Pittsburgh's other pinch-hitters are a combined 5-for-50.
Morton allowed six hits and four runs. The hits off him included three doubles and a triple. Morton failed to register a strikeout for the second time in his last four starts. As a sinkerballer, even at his best he doesn't need swing-and-miss stuff. Still, a mere five strikeouts in the 23 innings of his last four starts could be a red flag for his pitches' lack of movement.
Doug Slaten was the first man out of the Bucs' bullpen, the left-hander working a 1-2-3 fifth in his first Major League appearance since last Sept. 27, when he was with the Nationals.
It was a milestone game for Barajas: No. 1,000 behind the plate, the third active catcher into four figures (A.J. Pierzynski 1,474 and Ramon Hernandez 1,414).
Until next time,
You keep doing what you do, and I'll keep you up to date with everything sports
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