A Sad Good-bye to Home

The Pirates' drive to 90 victories suffered a setback Sunday as they fell in the rubber match of a three-game series with the San Diego Padres, 1-0. The game concluded an otherwise successful homestand, during which the Bucs won 7 of 10 games.

Unfortunately, as the Buccin' Ear noted in yesterday's post, the Pirates needed to win at least two of three of the equivalent of 34 of 36 three-game series going into the matchup with the Padres. Their razor-thin margin for error is now reduced to 34 of 35. Well, nobody said it was going to be easy. At 21-36, they need to go 69-36 the rest of the way. I am confident in saying this is the only blog or any other publication that is bringing you stats like that.

The Pirate bats were silenced by Chris Young, a former member of their organization (traded for the immortal Matt Herges), a 6-10 Ichabod who carried a no-hitter into the sixth and surrendered just two hits in eight innings. The Pirates can take cold comfort in the fact that their next opponent, the Colorado Rockies, suffered the same fate at the hands of Young earlier in the week. The difference was the Rockies didn't get a hit off him until the eighth. The Rockies' commentators made the same comment about Young as the Pirates' announcers and hitters did yesterday: he's tough because of his height, which enables him to come at hitters from higher angles than they are used to. Although he's as tall as Randy Johnson, he doesn't throw as hard as the Big Unit did. He calls himself a "flyball pitcher" who can get the popup when he needs it, just as the sinkerballer can get the groundball. Whatever the case, he's 5-3 and for now the leading pitcher on a pretty good Padres staff that still hasn't seen the best of Jake Peavy.

The aforementioned Rockies are a reeling bunch, which could turn out to be a dangerous thing for the Pirates. As recently as mid-May Colorado was one of the surprise teams in the league, leading the Western Division for a time and getting surprisingly good pitching and consistent play from a young group. They have lost 10 of their last 12, however, and are staggering from a sweep by the Florida Marlins that included a 13-0 loss. The Rockies scored just five runs during the homestand. They are undoubtedly desperate to avoid losing another series to a bottom-level club.

The lack of offensive production from Colorado is surprising (they have a number of very good young hitters, including Matt Holliday, Brad Hawpe and Garrett Atkins, although few people who don't follow the NL's Western Division have probably ever heard of them), but Coors Field is not quite the hitter's paradise it once was. The team began several years ago putting baseballs in a humidor to counteract the effects of the notorious warm, dry, mile-high air that routinely produced 9-8 games that ran to three-plus hours and occasionally more. Teams are still capable of scoring runs in bunches in there, not so much because of cheap home runs but because of the expansive outfield. The park favors teams with outfielders with good arms who can play shallow and get back on a ball well. It also punishes severely pitchers who fall behind in the count, which might not bode well for Ian Snell tonight.

The Rockies oppose Snell with a pitcher who struggled early but has seemed to find his way, Aaron Cook. Cook, the best hurler on the Colorado staff, will present the mirror image of Chris Young. He has a strong sinkerball that he has learned to trust and routinely induces a dozen or more grounballs a game. It will be interesting to see how the Pirate hitters adjust tonight.

The Pirates in a sense tonight meet themselves as they were a couple of weeks ago: a reeling team badly in need of a confidence builder. If the Bucs are going to salvage any type of a season, they need to keep the Rockies on the ropes over the next three nights and prove to themselves that the 10 games in Pittsburgh were not just a mirage.