Stop me if you’ve heard this before: the Pirates lost to the Cubs 6-5 today at Wrigley Field.
Of course, you’ve heard it before, because it was the same score as last night’s game. This one, however, didn’t go down to the wire, but like last night it came down to one play—or one swing, that is.
Steven Brault lived up to his nickname of Squid by kind of flopping around all over the place. Within his four-inning, 80-pitch limit, he gave up seven hits, five earned runs, and four walks. He also struck out four, but this, courtesy of BD Commentariat member darksealer, kind of summed up Squid’s day:
The Bucs slumbered at the plate during that time but began to show some signs of life in the fifth inning. Anthony Alford hit a monster shot to left field off Cubs starter Alec Mills, then Hoy Park did the same thing to right two pitches later. In the next inning, Colin Moran was the beneficiary of a Patrick Wisdom throwing error. Kevin Newman singled Redbeard over to second, and Moran scored on a Sergio Alcantara overthrow on a Michael Perez forceout. Alford, seeing Perez on base, was like “I got you, fam” and boomed one to center to tie the game at five.
Alas, that was the extent of the Pirates’ offense, as Frank Schwindel, who sounds like he should be my tax guy, homered off Anthony Banda for the winning run.
At this point, Derek Shelton is just playing with the lineup to see what happens. Cole Tucker was the leadoff hitter again to the loud fan chorus of WHHHYYYY? I don’t know either, although he did go 1-4 and got the only hit for the Tucker/Gamel/Reynolds Leadoff Triumvirate (Gamel struck out four times).
When it’s September and you know you’re not going to be in the postseason mix, why not change things up?