Pirates sink to Giants 7-5

Apparently, the Pirates can have good offense or good pitching, not both at the same time.

Today, pitching was the rope around the Bucs’ necks as they lost 7-5 to the Giants this afternoon at PNC Park.

But let’s start with some good stuff.

Liover Peguero, who, as we were reminded frequently during the game, was at Greensboro this time last year and is the first Pirate to be born in the twenty-first century, made his MLB debut today.

And this happened:

Jose Quintana wasn’t completely awful, but he’s had better outings. In five and a third innings, he gave up three earned runs on five hits, two of them homers by Wilmer Flores and Austin Slater, walked two, and struck out five. Luckily for the Pirates, Giants starter Andrew Wood struggled too. With the score 1-0 Giants after Flores went yard, Ke’Bryan Hayes singled, advanced on Bryan “Bobblehead” Reynolds’ groundout, Jack Suwinski’s single, and Diego Castillo’s sac fly.

That was Castillo’s first RBI of the day. Out of the Pirates’ five runs, he batted in four of them. Three of them came on this:

A no-doubter from Castillo? Things were looking up.

Middle relief, however, reared its ugly head, starting with an uncharacteristically bad showing from Wil Crowe, who gave up two singles and walked two to tie the score at four in the sixth. Mike Yastremski made Crowe pay with a sac fly that put the Giants ahead for good. Chris Stratton came in and Strattoned up the joint for the Giants’ last two runs. Anthony Banda, who’s been iffy lately, turned in two scoreless innings, and Heath Hembree managed to close things out.

The fifth Pirates run? Of course it was a VogelBOOM.

I’m sure Derek Shelton has some sort of method to his madness.

What it is, I have no idea.