Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 by Adam Wagner
Pirates win overly exciting opener
By now, you surely know that the Pirates were victorious over the Atlanta Braves in 12 innings on Monday night, winning 12-11 and leaving the magic number to history (tying the record for the most consecutive losing season) at 82. As has been noted in many different places, the bullpen failed abysmally and the offense worked out very well, continually helping the Pirates climb out of pitching- and defense-induced holes. This game, which took four hours and 28 minutes, could have been over in three hours if the Pirate bullpen, specifically Damaso Marte and Matt Capps, had just done their jobs.
John Russell revealed that he is exponentially more intelligent than his predecessor, Jim Tracy, awarding players based on performances, not on who he thought should be named the starter. This was perhaps most obvious in the surprising decision to start Ryan Doumit at catcher, a promotion that Doumit made sure Russell would not regret by rapping out three hits on the night.
Another move that paid off was starting Nate McLouth in center field, as the gritty outfielder hit a three-run home run in the eighth inning that gave the Pirates an 8-4 lead and that would prove integral in the ninth inning, when Marte and Capps performed their disappearing lead performance.
Russell did not, however, mismanage his bullpen, playing his cards exactly right on a night where his ace did not quite live up to his billing, as Ian Snell gave up four runs in six innings. Russell brought in Tyler Yates in a tied game situation, trusting one of his setup men against a team that he had been traded from less than a week ago. He then brought John Grabow in for the eighth, attempting to prevent the Braves from clawing their way back into the game. After Grabow proved effective, Marte was brought on to perform the same role, but just failed miserably. Capps was brought in when the situation became desperate and failed even more miserably, as the two pitchers walked four batters between them in the one inning of work. Anyone would have done exactly what Russell did and any blame for the elongated blame must fall on the performance of his pitchers, not on him.
In other news, Russell has announced that the lineup will be extremely flexible, stating that McLouth and Nyjer Morgan will be at the top of the order some days, that Doumit and Ronny Paulino are basically platooning at catcher and that Jack Wilson may yo-yo between the eight spot and the two hole. All of this means that it will be another season of many different lineup iterations and minimal consistency on the North Shore, meaning that we can either rip Russell for being inconsistent or else, on some nights, praise his genius.
If Xavier Nady keeps up his power surge (don’t worry, he probably won’t; Nady just happens to be very, very good on opening day), it will not be at all difficult for Neal Huntington to find a suitor for him, meaning that Steve Pearce would be able to return from his Indianapolis exile. Nady could be important to whatever success the Pirates might have this year, but Pearce is important for the next three or four years.
In one final note, negotiations between the Pirates and Adam LaRoche have stalled. That’s probably bad news for the club, as LaRoche is the only left-handed power in, well, basically the entire organization and keeping him is integral to any success that the team may have at PNC (the short right field wall still exists).
Any pessimism, however, must be attributed to my being a Pirate fan for much too long. After all, the magic number still stands at 82.
- For anyone who read yesterday’s steroid post and wondered “What the hell?” it was an April Fool’s Day joke . . . we know, it was posted on March 31, but most of you read it on April 1. Most of the article is satire, but we may or may not have been kidding about Travis Henry.
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