Final Score: Pirates 5 Tigers 8
Why The Pirates Lost: Carmen Mlodzinski had his third bad start in a row. In 8 and 1/3 innings he has given up 13 earned runs, a whopping 20 hits, walking 5 and striking 5. This 2 year experiment of making Mlodzinski a starter should end immediately. Why it was done in the first place I will never know. After falling behind 8-1 the Pirates rallied to make the score 8-5 in the bottom of the 6th. The Tiger bullpen really shut down the Pirates the last 3 innings. The Pirates only had two base runners on a walk and an error in the bottom of the 7th. They went down in order in both the 8th and the 9th. The Pirate offense tried to stay aggressive but fell back into some old habit. Esmerlyn Valdez, who was 0 for 5 with 3 strike outs had one at bat where he looked at all 4 pitches with 3 being called strikes. Bryan Reynolds was 0 for 5 with 3 strikeouts. He was at least in the aggressive mode, swinging at most of the pitches that were in the zone. It was another disappointing lost for the Pirates.
Key Moments Of The Game: Not starting with an opener for Mlodzinski was the big key to the game. I have written about this many times. They have done that two times with Mlodzinski and he has pitched his best, 11 innings giving up just 2 runs. Don’t do it management team. Just continue having no chance of winning games that he starts. Mlodzinski walked the first batter of the game. Looked like it was not going to hurt him getting the next two outs. He gave up 3 singles in a row and Tigers got out to a 2-0 lead. In the top of the 2nd, they made it 4-0 on a single and a home run. In the top of the 3rd, he gave up 2 more singles, but the Tigers did not score. He wound up throwing 59 pitches for the 3 innings. The Tigers were able to add on against Isaac Mattson and Yohan Ramirez. Ramirez was particularly wild walking 3 batters in one inning which helped the Tigers to score 3 runs, which proved to be the margin of difference. It led to that familiar Pirate pitching line of 3 runs on 2 hits. Another game where the entire Pirate team looked lost, and the other playoff contender they were playing looked focused and ready to play.
Next Game: Tonight, Tigers in Pittsburgh. Braxton Ashcraft will go for the Pirates tonight. It will be interesting to see if Ashcraft can back up his outstanding last performance. It is sometimes not the easiest thing to do. The Pirates continue to muddle along going back and forth between winning and losing. It seems they have been doing this for the last 4 months with losing becoming more frequent lately. They are now down to having a 1.1% chance of making the playoffs. The Pirates are tied for last in the division and 6.5 games behind in the wild card with 4 teams to plow through to make the playoffs. They have a brutal 9 game road trip coming up. It will be interesting to see how the Pirate broadcast booth spins all of that. Stay tuned.
The Goofy Game of Golf/Life Searching for the Answer 