RECAP - Pirates - 8 / Padres - 1

Clint Hurdle's Approach Is Perfect For this Pirates Team

Pittsburgh Pirates - 8
San Diego Padres - 1

WP - AJ Burnett
LP - Ross

"Ask and you shall receive"...someone said that once, not sure where.  Anyways, myself and the rest of the Pirates fan base were clamoring for a quality start from AJ Burnett.  On top of that, I ripped the less than stellar Pirates offense for their lack of doing anything that resembles production (outside of Andrew McCutchen of course).  Well, to put it bluntly, they shut me up last night.  Lets start with AJ Burnett.  Bucco fans were down on Burnett due to him blowing 2 leads in his last 2 starts.   Not typical stuff from a staff ace, and don't think for a second that AJ Burnett didn't know what was going on.  What was being said.  What was being discussed on sports radio.  This is a guy who is very active on twitter and is plugged into social media.  He knows...trust me, and he responded last night throwing 7 strong innings giving up only 4 hits, 1 earned run, and only 1 walk.  That one free pass is something that I love to see from AJ.  Sure, he struck out 7, thats typical for him, but only walking one shows me he was in control of the baseball last night.  He was quoted after the game as saying that he simply let Russell Martin call the game, and he tried not to think about anything.  Well, whatever you did...keep doing it because the Pirates need Liriano and Burnett to be their best pitchers down the stretch.

Now for that Pirates offense.  Well, putting up 8 runs is nice, but for once they actually had "timely" hits.  3 triples (Pedro Alvarez (no I'm not joking), Andrew McCutchen, and Josh Harrison) provided a total of 6 runs batted in for the Pirates.  Not too shabby hitting with RISP right?  The adage of its not how many hits you have, but when you have them rang true for the Pirates last night.  They scored 8 runs on only 9 hits.  Most of the time you see teams put up 8 runs on 15 hits or some big number like that.  Timely hitting is more important than more hitting, in my humble opinion.  With all that said, you didn't think I'd be 100% satisfied with this ONE performance did you?  After all, ONE game doesn't change everything.  I truly feel the pitching staff is coming around to their earlier form of dominance, but the offense needs to show me the most important word in baseball (CONSISTENCY) before I become a full blown believer in this unit.

Taking the first 2 games against the Padres guarantees the Pirates a series win, but with the Cardinals and Reds on their heals, the next 5 games are pretty big.  Well hell, it looks like the remainder of the schedule is going to be huge games unless a team dramatically falls out of the race, which I don't see happeneing between the Pirates, Cardinals, or Reds to be 100% honest with you.  Clint Hurdle's "One game at a time" approach is just what the doctor ordered for a young team that has held the division lead now for almost a calendar month.  One game at a time.  One start at a time.  One at bat at a time.  Oh yeah, and the streak might be broken by the end of the month if they win 8 of their final 10 games before September rolls around.  Just sayin...