Saturday, April 26th, 2008 by Adam Wagner
Duke single-handedly loses game
There is no one else to blame for tonight’s loss, no other shoulder that can possibly take the burden of defeat. The Pirates’ 6-5 loss to the Phillies was completely Zach Duke’s fault and there can be no doubt of that, as the starting pitcher wasted a solid offensive effort against a Philadelphia team with one-third of its star players out of the lineup.
Duke seems to be reverting back to classic Duke form, meaning soft pitches, lots of hits, lots of baserunners and, as a result, lots of runs. Duke let Philadelphia get nine hits, walked two Phillies and gave up six runs tonight. It was evident from the very beginning of the game that Duke was heading for a rough go of it tonight, as his two walks came in the opening frame and then gave up a two-run double to catcher Chris Coste.
Duke ran into more trouble in the third inning, giving up a home run to OF Jayson Werth and an RBI single to Coste. Duke’s problems are pretty simple and have been discussed both here and on other sites. He just doesn’t strike people out (he had two last night) and is very hittable. He leaves pitches out over the plate and it’s extremely easy for opposing hitters to wait for something that they can hit hard, usually for a hit somewhere. If Duke is ever going to become an effective major league pitcher, and that is beginning to look less and less likely, he is going to need to develop a better feel for the game as well as an “out pitch.” Duke needs to be perfect to be good and that’s just not going to happen all that often, particularly against major league hitters.
The bullpen was awesome again last night, shutting down the Phillies for the seventh, eighth and ninth innings. Tyler Yates is showing tendencies of a trouble pitcher, however, as he gave up one hit and two walks in the seventh inning, but managed to prevent the Phillies from scoring. Damaso Marte and John Grabow combined to throw a scoreless eighth and closer Matt Capps came on in the non-save situation and looked solid in the ninth.
On the topic of bullpens, Brad Lidge looked like the old Brad Lidge last night, making both Nate McLouth and Jason Bay look absolutely foolish with his slider in the ninth inning. If this is his true form, the National League should be aware that Lidge is no longer the Crawford Box-damaged goods that he was the past couple of seasons, but was instead the potentially dominating closer that he was prior to the 2005 National League Championship series.
As for the Pirates’ offense, Brian Bixler is finally contributing as the rookie shortstop went 2-for-3 with a walk. Bixler probably isn’t the shortstop of the future, but it would be nice to know that he can potentially be the very good bench bat of the future. More importantly, Bay hit his fifth home run of the season, meaning that, even though he only has eight RBIs, the Pirate leftfielder is on track for a 30 home run season at this point and may have rediscovered his power stroke. Now he only needs players to get on base in front of him, as McLouth and Freddy Sanchez went a combined 0-for-9, preventing Bay from having the game-altering impact that he did in 2005 and 2006.
Xavier Nady continued to stay hot, going 2-for-4 with three RBIs. Nady is one of the streakiest Pirates, but when he is hot, he is undoubtedly one of the better hitters on the team which is clearly evident right now. Nady, who is currently on a 13 game hit streak, may not even be the best Pirate hitter on nights when catcher Ryan Doumit is in the lineup, however. Doumit has really been awesome thus far, going 2-for-3 with a walk and two doubles, raising his average to .359. If both of these players can keep it up and Bay can maintain his power, the Pirates may even have a semi-formidable middle of the order (as long as you overlook the black hole that is Adam LaRoche until June 1).
Despite my putting a somewhat pretty picture on it, the fact of the matter is that the Pirates still did manage to lose, thereby dropping the magic number to 68. Matt Morris is supposedly getting the start tomorrow, however, which means that the magic number should just be dropped to 67.
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