Pirates starter Ian Snell will be examined tomorrow for what he and the team described as right elbow irritation after an 8-5 loss to Toronto this afternoon before 22,983 at PNC Park, as well as a chance at a three-game sweep of the Blue Jays.

He told manager John Russell about it after four innings -- four runs, eight hits, four walks on 91 pitches -- and Russell pulled him.

Snell will have an arthrogram performed tomorrow at Allegheny General Hospital to check for structural damage, but the Pirates strongly suggested they feel that will not be the case.

"Hopefully, it's not anything major," Russell said.

Snell said he never experienced any pain in the elbow before today.

"I felt it with every pitch," he said. "To tell you the truth, I thought it was dead arm. But I was wrong. I tried to fight through it, just keep on going. But the velocity wasn't there. Nothing's there. Something's got to be wrong. I've never been hurt in my entire life."

He also expressed general dissatisfaction with everything from having won one of his past 13 starts to his 5.99 ERA to being booed, as he was again today.

"You've got to show your team you want to be there," Snell said. "It doesn't matter if you're sore or not. I wanted to show my team that I wanted to be out there. Obviously, I didn't have it, and I was still trying to be out there."

He raised his voice slightly.

"I never give up. I don't care if people boo me, tell me I [stink], whatever. You're not going to take my manhood from me or my competitiveness from me. Nobody will ever do that! Ever! Until the day I die, then you take it from me."

Franquelis Osoria entered with one out in the sixth and the score tied, 4-4, and gave up three runs, including Scott Rolen's two-run home run.

His ERA is 5.84, and opponents are batting .332 against him, with seven home runs, each figure by far the worst among relievers who have spent the full season with the Pirates.

Toronto started quickly against Snell, getting a walk, a single, Alex Rios' RBI double and Vernon Wells' sacrifice fly in the first four at-bats for a 2-0 lead. Further damage was spared when catcher Raul Chavez picked Rios off third base.

The Pirates countered with one in the bottom half on Jason Bay's run-scoring groundout off Toronto starter Dustin McGowan.

Snell stranded five runners in the next two innings but was not so fortunate in the fourth: Alex Lind opened with a marvelous at-bat in which he fouled off six full-count pitches, then launched a home run into the center-field seats. Two singles, a walk and another Wells sacrifice fly, and it was 4-1.

The Pirates rallied to tie in the bottom half, opening with five consecutive singles. That streak was ended when Freddy Sanchez, pinch-hitting for Snell, tried to bunt to advance runners to second and third but popped out.

It was Russell's idea to bunt.

"We're looking to go up two runs," Russell said. "At that point in the game, we felt pretty good about it."

Two outs later, the inning fizzled into much less than what it could have been had McGowan not been handed an out.

T.J. Beam, freshly promoted from Class AAA Indianapolis, pitched a scoreless fifth, but opened the sixth with a walk. After a sacrifice bunt, Russell replaced Beam with Osoria.

Osoria had been scored upon in seven of his previous nine outings, with 12 runs in 14 innings in that span. He gave up Rios' single right away and, after the second out, Lyle Overbay's two-run double. Rolen then crushed a flat fastball, up and over the heart of the plate, into the left-field bleachers to put the Blue Jays ahead, 8-4.

The Pirates added an unearned run in the sixth, but that would be it. They finished with 10 hits and had several very solidly struck outs in stranding seven runners.

Toronto had lost seven in a row before this and was held to 29 runs in its previous 11 games.

The New York Yankees visit next, beginning Tuesday.

More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.