Locke, Gomez, Morris come apart in 15-5 blowout loss

Jeff Locke gave up ALL THE RUNS, and some of the relievers who followed him weren't much better, as the Bucs lost 15-5 to the Diamondbacks Saturday.

Locke retired the first batter he faced, and then not much went right after that. The next three batters reached base, two via walks, and Wil Nieves knocked in two runners with a double.

Then, in the third, Locke allowed seven straight two-out hits, one of which was a three-run homer by Martin Prado, en route to a six-run inning.

The Pirates actually worked their way back into the game for awhile after that, as Starling Marte hit a solo homer in the bottom of the third, and Pedro Alvarez followed a few batters later with a three-run bomb, his 30th homer of the season. Jose Tabata knocked in a run with a single in the sixth to make it 8-5. Meanwhile, Jared Hughes, Vin Mazzaro and Justin Wilson combined for 4.1 straight scoreless innings, giving the Pirates an opportunity.

In the eighth, though, Jeanmar Gomez (after his marvelous outing yesterday) gave up four straight singles and got charged with runs for all four of them. Then Bryan Morris entered and allowed all the runners he inherited to score before giving up three runs of his own on a Paul Goldschmidt homer in the ninth. Ugly stuff. I'm sure the Pirates probably would have preferred not to use Gomez today, and I'm not totally sure why they did, but Clint Hurdle may have figured that Gomez only threw 23 pitches over two innings yesterday, and all hands needed to be on deck after Locke's short outing.

Just for posterity, here were the season BABIPs for Locke, Gomez and Morris heading into this afternoon's game.

Locke .256
Gomez .233
Morris .224

Now, Pirates pitchers are going to post fairly low BABIPs because their defense is terrific, but still -- UNSUSTAINABLE RESULTS MAKE REGRESSION MONSTER ANGRY. Let's hope that, after this one game, he's back in his cave.

By the way, I send a "Booo" right back to the fans booing the Pirates today. They're in first place. They just won yesterday. It's not 2007 anymore. Cut them some slack.