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CHICAGO -- The Pirates' 5-3 loss Wednesday afternoon to the Chicago Cubs can be condensed to two essential elements:
1. Neil Walker, visibly approaching each at-bat with a gloriously carefree confidence, homered for the fourth time in five games and went 3 for 5 with a double. He is batting .310 with nine home runs -- four in the past five games -- and 49 RBIs in his first three months of Major League Baseball.
2. The game just is not that easy, even for the most talented youngsters.
Consider James McDonald, the promising 25-year-old fledgling starter who has alternately dazzled and labored: He allowed three runs on eight hits in five innings. He needed 98 pitches to get that far, walked two, threw two wild pitches and fell behind an eye-popping 18 of his 25 batters.
Game: Pirates vs. Washington Nationals, 7:05 p.m., PNC Park.
TV, radio: FSN Pittsburgh, WPGB-FM (104.7).
Pitching: LHP Zach Duke (6-12, 5.17) vs. RHP Livan Hernandez (9-9, 3.49)
His repertoire and his command had bailed on him early, he gave up RBI doubles to Koyie Hill, Kosuke Fukudome and Tyler Colvin in the second and third innings, and he exited with Chicago ahead, 3-2.
"James wasn't able to get the ball down like he usually does," manager John Russell said. "But he battled without his best stuff and kept us in it."
"It was a couple mechanical things," McDonald said in explaining his command. "I kept pulling my head off to the left and was looking off the plate too much. I had to fight through it. But you've got to compete anyway. Anybody can pitch with their best stuff. This is when you have to pitch."
Consider, too, the Pirates' other everyday rookies, Pedro Alvarez and Jose Tabata.
With Chicago ahead, 5-2, in the eighth, Andrew McCutchen had just masterfully worked the Cubs' dynamic closer, Carlos Marmol, for an eight-pitch, bases-loaded walk, laying off Marmol's always-untouchable slider and fouling off anything close. It was 5-3, it was Marmol's second walk in a row and, even with two outs, there was hope.
But Tabata, who has been just as good as Walker in batting .307, struck out swinging at three pitches.
And it was easy to tell which player had seen more of Marmol.
"Marmol ... that guy is good," Tabata said with a sigh.
Marmol stayed out for the ninth, and he fanned Walker, too, getting him to swing through three sliders.
Garrett Jones, who has seen as much of Marmol as McCutchen, worked a walk, and hope was rekindled. But Alvarez swung at the first pitch to pop up, and Ryan Doumit struck out to end it.
"Tough day," Alvarez said.
For most everyone, actually, especially in the clutch sense.
Aside from Walker's output, two hits by Ronny Cedeno and McCutchen's RBI double in the fifth, there were nine walks and the hit batsman, meaning the Cubs handed out 10 free baserunners. Of those freebies, only two resulted in runs.
Runners were stranded in scoring position in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth innings, for an overall 0-for-9 output in those situations. All four of those innings ended on strikeouts, with Jones twice taking ugly swings outside the zone. Twelve total runners were left on base.
And this despite Chicago starter Tom Gorzelanny being forced to leave the game in the third inning after he was struck on his pitching hand by a Tabata line drive. X-rays did not detect a fracture.
Walker, the batter right after Gorzelanny was felled, homered off Thomas Diamond into the left-field bleachers, his ninth of the season, for a 1-1 tie.
And talk about making it look easy: For the trip, Walker went 13 for 29, a .448 average, with the 5 home runs, 4 doubles and 8 RBIs, extending a nine-game hitting streak. For August, he batted .306 with 22 RBIs, the latter leading all major league rookies and ranking ninth among all National League players.
"I've just been trying to step in the box, see the ball, trust my hands and use the whole field," Walker said, sounding much the same as he did after his home run and 4-for-5 output the previous night. "I'm not worried about where to hit it, what else is going on."
And the home runs?
"I certainly wasn't trying to hit those balls out. My line-drive approach, once in a while, you'll catch some balls up front or up in the zone that you can hit out of the ballpark. We weren't playing at PNC Park, either. A couple of these balls wouldn't have gotten out at home. But I'll take them."
The previous night, Walker offered unsolicited praise for hitting coach Don Long for helping him "learn about pitchers I've never seen before." But Long was the first to concede that there is only one course offered in studying Marmol.
"When he tucks that shoulder and brings that knee up, you don't see the ball coming, and that slider gets right up on you," Long said. "The only way to get used to facing Marmol is to face him, and that's something all these kids are going to have a chance to do again. And they'll be ready."
The Pirates, 1-5 on the trip and 44-89 overall, are off today.
Colin Dunlap's blog on the Pirates is featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.
