Friday, April 25th, 2008 by Adam Wagner
Inconsistency, anemic offense beat Pirates
Over the last two nights, fans have been treated to the best and worst of Pirate baseball, but one thing has remained constant - the starting pitching isn’t very good or very consistent. On Wednesday night, Ian Snell surrendered four runs in the first inning only to last through the sixth inning en route to a 7-4 Pirate win. On Thursday night, Tom Gorzelanny struggled with his control, walking seven batters, but took a no-hitter into the fifth inning. The Pirates ended up losing the game 6-2, in no small part due to Gorzelanny’s wildness.
In order for the Pirates to win baseball games, their starting pitching needs to be consistently good and, to this point, it has been extremely inconsistent. The only pitcher who has been consistent thus far has been Matt Morris and he has only consistently been one of the worst pitchers in baseball.
Gorzelanny’s wildness, in particular, is disturbing. Seven walks in five innings (only 49 of his 94 pitches were strikes) is scarily high. The Pirates should probably start being concerned about Gorzelanny, particularly about whether his increased innings total last year may have done something to his left arm. Gorzelanny could very easily have an injury that may be affecting his placement, especially considering the fact that this is a pitcher who is consistently shut down at the end of the regular season. It may not time to hit the panic button on Gorzelanny just yet, but it is probably time to look into what the options would be if hitting that button does become a necessity.
Just as disturbing as the starting pitching is the somewhat anemic offense, which somehow managed to score seven runs on Wednesday night in a very solid all-around effort that featured a home run by Jason Bay, a two-out single by Jose Bautista and even solid hitting from Brian Bixler and Doug Mientkiewicz. On Thursday, however, the Pirates had returned to being the same old team, making Joel Pineiro look like a very good major league pitcher by mustering only four hits off of him over seven innings.
Nate McLouth has been in an 0-for-10 slump in the three games since his hitting streak ended, even as Xavier Nady’s hitting streak moved to 12 games. The Pirates are a team of streaky players, but those players never seem to get streaky at the same time, meaning that the club will always be below mediocrity.
The Pirates managed to prevent the magic number from decreasing a couple of times this week, but now it drops to 69.
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