Last night's game started well, with Kyle Kendrick hanging a cutter for leadoff hitter Delwyn Young to sock over the right field fence, but things quickly came apart after that for Charlie Morton. (Very quickly, in fact--I vacated my computer to help a student for a few minutes and by the time I was back, five more runs were on the board.) After the barrage of runs in the third, the Pirates didn't manage much against Kendrick, who went eight innings for only the third time in his entire career.
In the minors, Indianapolis got two-hit by Enrique Gonzalez and the Toledo Mud Hens, but Brad Lincoln racked up ten strikeouts in seven innings, which is nice for him--he hasn't been much of a strikeout pitcher. Bradenton got blown out by Dunedin, with Aaron Pribanic, who has been a bust so far this year, allowing seven runs, five earned. West Virginia was postponed, and Altoona was off.
In other news, Starling Marte will, in fact, have hand surgery. The type of injury he has might reduce his power for a while, but it should come back. The issue, it would seem, is the lost development time. He should come back in August but presumably will not be playing at full strength then, and then the minor league season ends basically at the beginning of September. He'll probably wind up with only a couple hundred at bats for the year.
Also, Hunter Strickland has been promoted from West Virginia to Bradenton, which surely is the result of the promotion of Bryan Morris to Altoona, which left a spot open for which there were few obvious candidates. Strickland has been terrible this year, but no one was really knocking down the door. Nate Baker has pitched well for West Virginia, but I'm sure the Pirates would like him to stay there for another month or so.
Finally, the Indianapolis game on Wednesday morning will be broadcast on MLB Network.