Pirates Morning Report: The Bucco Bombers?

Final Score: Pirates 9 Yankees 4

Why The Pirates Won: The Pirates brought out the long ball hitting 5 home runs that accounted for 8 of the 9 runs. Skenes pitched 2 innings, why, I do not know. Mike Burrows made his major league debut going 3.1 innings giving up 1 earned run on 2 hits but walking 3 while striking out 2 batters. He picked up the win in his debut game. The rest of the bullpen did ok, except the guys who usually don’t, Ryan Borucki and Shelton’s favorite Jalen Beeks. Greg Brown thought this game was one to remember even though it was pretty much meaningless. He gave the name Bucco Bombers to the offense, what a joke, but he was serious. He was all over Juan Soto for his base running blunder late in the game. If he followed baseball at all, which I don’t think he does, he would have known that Soto does this all the time. He is one of the worse base runners in the league. Even though the Yankees are still trying to get the best record in the American League you can tell they are just playing out the string. Aaron Judge struck out 5 times in 5 at bats. The fact that Skenes struck him out in his first at bat is not that big a deal when he wound up having a day like he had. The Pirates did reach 66 wins.

Key Moment Of The Game: The Yankees for the 2nd day in a row could not take advantage of opportunities that the Pirates gave them. The bottom of the 6th the Pirates walked the bases loaded, then gave the Yankees a 4th out, but the Yankees could only score 1 run. In the bottom of the 9th Jalen Beeks gave up two singles and a walk to load the bases with one out. Aroldis Chapman came in and joined the crowd by striking out Judge and getting a line out to end the game. It will be interesting to see today if the Yankees get down to business. With their playoff history could this be a prelude to an early exit. Only time will tell. Still better than the Pirates who exited in August.

Next and Final Game: This afternoon, Yankees in New York. Thankfully this season for the Pirates will come to an end today. No matter what happens today there will be no more watching the Bucco Bombers. After the season I will do a team and player wrap up and then on to the playoffs.