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The Pirates busted out for 11 runs in Washington only one night after being held to two runs by Odalis Perez. The Nationals started young left-hander John Lannan, who had been extremely impressive to this point, against Phil Dumatrait, who was making his first start in Matt Morris’ spot in the rotation. Dumatrait responded by giving up four runs in four innings, but the offense saved the day.

Dumatrait’s performance was scary, as the young lefty gave up six hits and struck out four batters in addition to giving up the four runs. He has definitely pitched better, but this was his first time in the rotation with Pittsburgh. With that said, Dumatrait failed to even reach the 75-80 pitches that were his pitch count, throwing 66 before being pulled.

Lannan managed to last even fewer innings, only going three before being yanked. In those three innings, Lannan managed to surrender five earned runs (six in all), six hits and to strike out no batters. Lannan, who entered the game with 2.64 ERA, left with a 3.74 ERA after the six-run third inning.

The inning started with Nate McLouth, who is doing a good impersonation of a textbook lead-off man, drawing a nine-pitch walk off of Lannan, demonstrating the patience that has made him extremely effective to this point in the season. Freddy Sanchez then got out, but Jason Bay drew a nine-pitch walk, advancing McLouth to second. Ryan Doumit then singled, scoring Doumit, to be followed by an Xavier Nady single, scoring another run, and a Felipe Lopez error that scored yet another one. Bautista then launched a three-run home run to give the Pirates a 6-0 lead, the first home run that Bautista would hit Friday night.

Bautista finally starting up is integral to the success of the Pirate offense as the outfield, which ranked first in the National League in OPS earlier this week, is producing and Ryan Doumit is producing from behind the plate, but the infield is simply failing to do the job offensively. The return of Jack Wilson should help with that, Freddy Sanchez should start hitting eventually, and the inevitable mid-summer heating up of Adam LaRoche. The only weak spot of well below mediocrity left and if he can get over his early season struggles, during which he looked more like a super sub than like an everyday player, the Pirates should be a decent offensive team.

Whatever the cause, the whole team was rolling tonight (and that’s not even counting the five shutout innings that the bullpen threw), keeping the magic number at 65.

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