Sunday, May 4th, 2008 by Adam Wagner
Pirates suffer bad loss in D.C.
Two of the Pirates’ main problems came back to haunt them again on Saturday as Paul Maholm gave up seven runs in five innings and Adam LaRoche left six runners on base en route to a 9-8 loss to the Washington Nationals yesterday as the Pirates lost a series to one of the few teams that may actually be worse than they are.
One of the most confusing aspects about this game was that both teams wore the uniforms of the same team, the Homestead Grays. The Pirates wore the dark blue uniforms of the Grays, while the Nationals wore their red uniforms. The tribute was kind of cool, as the Grays have history in both Washington and Pittsburgh, so for the teams to honor them together worked very well.
Paul Maholm is one of the most infuriatingly inconsistent pitchers in a long line of them, coming off of a complete game two-hitter by being just another terrible Pirate pitcher. Maholm struggled in the first, giving up a two-run home run to light-hitting shortstop Christian Guzman. The second was even worse for Maholm, however, as he allowed the Nationals to string four hits and two walks together to put three more runs on the board.
The offense managed to scratch its way back into the game, scoring once in the second, once in the fourth and three times in the fifth. The run in the fourth came off of the bat of Jose Bautista, who hit his third home run of the series. Bautista has always been an extremely streaky hitter and it would be good for the Pirates if he could finally start hitting mainly because that would allow them to play Doug Mienkiewicz at 1B, where Adam LaRoche left six men on base today.
A solution needs to be found at that position as LaRoche just isn’t hitting right now and it is severely hurting the team’s chances to be successful. Also doing so is the play at shortstop, where Chris Gomez committed two errors today. This team really needs Jack Wilson back.
The other major failure of the day came from reliever Franquelis Osoria who surrendered two runs in the sixth inning. Those two runs lost the Pirates a game that would have been really good to win and, in doing so, showed that there are some relievers who John Russell should trust in important situations (Yates, Marte, Grabow and Capps) and others who need to be left to mop-up roles (Osoria and Meek).
Despite the offensive breakout, this was a bad loss for the Pirates as the defense failed, both the starting and relief pitching failed and the club wasted multiple attempts to win the game. Those are the things that need to go right in order for the Pirates to ever have a winning record. Until then, however, the magic number, which is now at 64, will continue to drop.
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