John Heller, Post-Gazette Pirates second baseman Jose Castillo tags out the Marlins' Matt Treanor as he attempts to steal the base. Click photo for larger image. Related articles Pirates Notebook: Casey practices, projects early return Paul Meyer's Baseball Notebook: An empty plate Paul Meyer's Power Rankings: 5/14/06 Smizik: Tracy learns how bad it is Collier: Pirates' offense a fish out of water against Marlins' paltry pitching Finder: Jail for book on Bonds a bad ending Game Statistics Provided by Forecaster Pirates vs. Marlins box score Game play-by-play

Any number of possibilities could have pushed across the one run the Pirates needed in the pivotal sixth inning of the 4-3 loss to the Florida Marlins last night at PNC Park.

Jason Bay led off with a single, and Craig Wilson tripled him home to cut Florida's deficit to one.

Nobody out, man on third, 22-year-old starter on the ropes.

A fly ball would do it.

A squibber, too.

And a hit of any sort surely would have sent the Marlins, the worst team in Major League Baseball, reeling.

As it was ...

"Once again, the key at-bat, the key hit avoids us," Pirates manager Jim Tracy said. "It's that simple."

Simple as 1-2-3, really.

Florida left-hander Scott Olsen struck out Jeromy Burnitz, swinging over a slider.

He struck out Ronny Paulino, swinging over a slider.

And he struck out Jose Castillo ... well, you know.

The crowd of 29,289 booed louder with each whiff, and the mood in the clubhouse afterward seemed no less dissatisfied.

"We needed to have our sights set a little higher higher," Tracy said, referring to pitch selection. "You're looking for a ball you can send to the outfield."

But he also praised Olsen.

"He made sharp pitches with big breaks, and we went after them. Give him credit. He hung none of them."

"The guy threw really well right there," Castillo said. "He had a great slider."

The Pirates would make no dent in Florida's 4-3 lead and would not produce another hit the rest of the way.

Not surprisingly, the Marlins also viewed the sixth as decisive.

"What he was able to do was great," manager Joe Girardi said. "That's sucking up and making pitches."

"With a one-run game at that point, he can't score," Olsen said of Wilson at third. "My slider was what was working, so I wanted to throw it. If I was going to lose, I was going to go down with my best pitch."

Catcher Matt Treanor visited the mound just before that sequence.

"I said, 'Not tonight. Tonight's not the night. We're not doing this again," Treanor recalled. "And, when he looked at me, I knew that he knew what was going on. From there, we just had to go to work. We didn't give in."

Olsen, making his 11th major-league start, entered with an awful ratio of 14 strikeouts to 19 walks, but flipped that to nine strikeouts and two walks on this night.

Asked if the Pirates might have helped Olsen by chasing poor pitches, Tracy rejected it.

"He pitched much better than what you read left to right," he said, referring to Olsen's statistics.

After Florida nicked Pirates starter Zach Duke for the opening run on Hanley Ramirez's RBI single in the third, Jose Bautista hit a two-run home run in the bottom half, his first in the majors. One out after Castillo walked, he launched a flat Olsen slider into the bullpen beyond center field.

The Marlins tied the score, 2-2, in their next at-bat when Miguel Cabrera doubled and scored on Josh Willingham's single.

They picked up two more in the sixth when Cabrera neatly shortened his arms to mash Duke's 0-2 inside fastball for an RBI double, then came across later on Wes Helms' double-play grounder.

Duke, who fell to 2-4, was out after the sixth after giving up four runs on eight hits.

"I wasn't really locating my fastball in on righties," Duke said.

After the Pirates' big fizzle in the sixth, their bullpen kept them tight with scoreless innings from Matt Capps, Roberto Hernandez and Salomon Torres. But they blew another chance to tie in the eighth. Bay walked and, after two outs, stole second. Burnitz walked. Paulino swung over a Logan Kensing slider for strike three.

In all, the Pirates struck out 12 times to boost their season total to 261, seventh-most in the majors.

They also fell to 1-13 when facing a left-handed starter. Their lone victory against a southpaw came April 9 in Cincinnati against Dave Williams.

And, for the season, they dropped to 11-26. A loss today to Florida, whose $14.9 million payroll is less than a third of the Pirates' $47 million, would leave them with the worst record in the majors.