One of the really nice things about the Pirates' season so far has been that the Bucs have rarely played like the Cubs played today. It used to be that the Pirates played that way all the time; now they occasionally get to have some fun while other teams do it.
Take the Pirates' matchup against Doug Davis, for example. Davis is the sort of washed-up pitcher who would have eaten the Pirates for breakfast last year. Now, there's no longer any guarantee that will happen. In fact, the Pirates managed to score four runs today not so much due to their own hitting, but because of the Cubs' poor defense and Davis' inability to find the strike zone. The Bucs' offense might not be good, but no longer are the Pirates so incompetent that they can't take something another team is handing to them.
The Bucs got two in the second. Chris Snyder walked, Lyle Overbay singled him around to third, and then Ronny Cedeno for some reason bunted back to the pitcher. Fortunately, Davis made an error, and everyone was safe (with Snyder staying at third). Another error, this time by Aramis Ramirez, allowed Kevin Correia to reach safely and Snyder to come home. Then Steve Pearce brought another run home on a sacrifice fly.
The Pirates got two more in the fourth when Cedeno and Jose Tabata walked, and Pearce was hit by a pitch. Davis' bases-loaded walk to Andrew McCutchen brought home a run, and Neil Walker's infield single brought home another.
Correia, meanwhile, pitched 7.1 innings in which it seemed like he hardly had to do much of anything, striking out only two batters. The Cubs scored two on a homer by Alfonso Soriano off Joe Beimel in the ninth, but Joel Hanrahan came in and pitched a classic Hanrahan inning, making three straight batters look foolish with his tremendous stuff.