Pirates lose 4-2 to Rays

The Pirates only had one hit before the eighth inning, but scored two runs against Jake Odorizzi in garbage time to cut the Rays' winning margin to 4-2.

James McDonald pitched four scoreless innings, though he walked three batters. Meanwhile, the Rays' starter, Alex Cobb, shut the Bucs down, whiffing five and walking none over four innings of his own.

The good news here is that the only Pirates pitcher who gave up any runs was Jeanmar Gomez, who put up four unearned. When I was seven or so, a kid on my soccer team took the ball, streaked downfield, and proudly kicked the ball into his own goal. Gomez and Jonathan Sanchez seem to be doing that at the same time. It's as if they're playing in some bizarro real-money fantasy league where they're able to short-sell on themselves.

This isn't to say that the four-spot was entirely Gomez's fault. Gaby Sanchez made a key error that would have gotten the Pirates out of the inning unscathed. And Justin Wilson (whose picture I'm going to use above, so that I don't have to feature Gomez yet again) followed Gomez and made things worse, allowing an inherited runner to score and walking two batters of his own. But other than Gomez (who's quickly made himself irrelevant) and Wilson, the Pirates' pitchers handled themselves fairly well.