Cubs annihilate Pirates 21-0

I’m sure you’re familiar with the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Here are a couple that sum up today’s game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field:

How bad was it? Take it away, Jason Mackey:

The Bucs had seemed to have the Cubs’ number in this young season, but it didn’t take long for Bucs starter Zach Thompson to get into trouble. After striking out Rafael Ortega, he gave up successive singles to Seiya Suzuki, Willson Contreras and Ian Happ, Happ’s hit scoring Suzuki. However, Thompson managed to escape the inning with just the one run.

He wasn’t so fortunate in the second inning.

Like in the previous inning, the first Cub was out, in this case Alfonso Rivas via a lineout to Bryan Reynolds. After that, it was like watching a death by paper cuts, except the paper cuts were singles. Oh, except for Kevin Newman committing two really dumb errors, which caused me to tweet this:

By the time the carnage ended, it was 9-0 Cubs, with the added insult of Rivas hitting only his second career homer that drove in three runs. A member of the BD Commentariat predicted that the score would be 20-0. I responded with the Big Bag of SHH meme. My apologies, RaiseTheJollyRancherGirl, for not properly acknowledging your prophetic words.

Pirates relief pitching, which has come to the rescue before, was just as godawful ineffective. Miguel Yajure gave up another seven runs. Aaron Fletcher three. Diego Castillo gave up the final four runs, but things like that happen when you’re reduced to having position players pitch. Another sad note from Mackey:

Actually, the Pirates did get three hits from Daniel Vogelbach, Anthony Alford, and the much-maligned Cole Tucker, but yeah.

This was literally the ugliest game in Pirates history, but it’s only one game. Plus it’s April, and freaking out over what a team does, good or bad, in April is a bit premature.

Which is why I didn’t use any of the “people hanging themselves” GIFs.