Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Another Reason Why We Love Baseball...Pirates 5 - Tigers 3

I have just returned home from attending the Pirates 5-3 win over the Tigers with buddy, Len Martin.

If you care enough to be reading this, most likely you know what transpired.  With one out in the bottom of the seventh inning, I was contemplating how I was going to write about the absolutely dominating performance of Tigers pitcher Annibal Sanchez, and while it was too bad the Pirates lost, but that you had to tip your hat to such a dominating performance from a pitcher.  At that point he had given up two hits, had nine strike outs, no walks, and his pitch count was in the low 70's, with an ungodly  K:BB ratio, and the Tigers led 3-1.  Then....

  • Garret Jones singles
  • Russell Martin walks
  • Pedro Alvarez, who couldn't have looked more pathetic in his two previous AB's, doubles to the opposite field, scoring Jones and Martin.  Tie game.
  • Travis Snider doubles, scoring Alvarez, then advances to third on a wild pitch
  • Jordy Mercer then lays down a perfect squeeze bunt that scores Snider without a play being made on either Snider or Mercer.
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the game had completely turned around.  What appeared to be a desultory loss, became an electrifying win for the Pirates, served with the requisite grilled cheese sammitch from Jason Grilli in the ninth.

If this were a football game, and your team was being dominated the way Sanchez was dominating the Pirates, there is no way the team turns it around and wins the game.  Another reason why we love baseball.

One final note.  In this series, the Pirates have managed to keep Miguel Cabrera in check, until the fifth inning when he launched an absolute rocket halfway up into the right field seats.  A no-doubt-about-it bomb.  Since the Bucs did manage to win this one, I have to say that it was kind of fun to see Miggy, who is having another unbelievable year, hit such a bomb.

1 comment:

  1. It did look like that the Bucs were going to be beat by Sanchez. But in a blink of an eye, it changed. It was a good game with some great pitching. I, too, enjoyed seeing a Cabrera HR. The man has obscene numbers for games through May 29th.

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