Final Score: Pirates 7 Giants 6 in 10 innings
Why The Pirates Won: The original opening sentence for this segment would have been the Pirates couldn’t hit, couldn’t pitch and couldn’t field. Other than that, they played a pretty good game. However, in the last two innings the Giants couldn’t do any of those things, plus went brain dead. Oniel Cruz’s night sums up this game perfectly. In the first inning he dropped a pop up that allowed 2 runs to score. He got two-line drive hits his first two times up at the plate resulting in a single and a double. His next two at bats went like this. He took a strike. He swung at a ball. He fouls a strike. He swung at a ball. He takes a strike. He swings at a ball way inside. This resulted in a strike out and a weak pop up between first and home plate. In the bottom of the ninth, he ripped a low inside pitch for a double to tie the game at 6-6 to send it into extra innings. Even though Martin Perez got a bad break when Cruz dropped that pop up in the first, he was working from behind for his entire 4 and 1/3 innings throwing 98 ineffective pitches. The bullpen gave up another 2 runs and Giants led 6-2 going into that eventful bottom of the 9th.
Key Moments Of The Game: In the bottom of the ninth, the Pirates had rallied to make the score 6-3, thanks to a walk, a double, a walk and a single, that had the bases loaded with 1 out. Andrew McCutchen hit a ground ball to short that had the potential to be a double play ball. In his urgency to turn the double play Marco Luciano did not field the ball cleanly getting nobody out and a run scored to make it 6-4. Bryan Reynolds hit a ground ball a little more toward hole at short where the force out was made but it was not hit hard enough to turn two. This enabled Cruz to get his big 2-out hit that tied the game 6-6. The Giants played like they did not realize they had a 4-run lead. In the top of the 10th the Giants moved the ghost runner over to third with one out. David Bedar went 3-0 on the next batter, LaMonte Wade Jr. Taking a page out of the Andy Haines hitting book, he takes 2 strikes essentially right down the middle. This, when all the Giants needed was a fly ball to get the run in. Wade fouled off the next pitch before striking out on a vicious splitter for the 2nd out. Bednar got the next batter to fly out to end the inning. Nick Gonzales ended the game, singling up the middle on the first pitch in the bottom of the 10th and the Pirates had an amazing come from behind win.
Next Game: Tonight, the Giants in Pittsburgh. Jared Jones goes tonight for the Pirates. He has not been quite as dominant in his more recent starts. It would be nice to see him have a great outing with 8 to 10 strike outs and no gopher balls. The Giants are going to counter with Blake Snell coming off the IL. Will he be a little rusty? The good news is we won’t be seeing Tellez. Can we make it 3 in a row?
The Goofy Game of Golf/Life Searching for the Answer 