Pirates bumble their way to 5-1 loss

The Pirates bumbled their way through a 5-1 loss to the Brewers Monday night.

Remember back in 2011, when we'd grown accustomed to Ryan Doumit, Dusty Brown and whoever else behind the plate, and Michael McKenry's defense seemed like a breath of fresh air? Well, no longer. The Brewers stole six bases off McKenry and generally had their way with the Bucs on the bases, thanks in part to McKenry's ridiculously poor throws. Not that it was entirely McKenry's fault. A.J. Burnett, who also had two errors in addition to failing to hold runners, was part of the problem too.

The Brewers have been a home-run offense this year, but they didn't have any tonight, mostly picking Burnett and the Pirates apart with the running game. They scored one in the first, then two more in the fifth. They got one in the seventh, thanks to three Bucs errors in that inning. Then they grabbed another in the ninth on Norichika Aoki's RBI infield single. Of course, by that point, the game felt like it was long over. Burnett threw about a billion pitches in the first two innings, and after six, the Bucs were down three and Burnett's pitch count was around 90. The Bucs sent him out to lead off the bottom of the sixth anyway. Burnett struck out six and walked none, so the preceding probably makes his performance sound worse than it was, but at some point, you've got to take a chance to win the game.