Collier: Better pitching needs to start with Duke
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On a night when the Pirates were doing that thing they do -- you've seen it -- making a 2-2 tie feel like a four-run deficit, the offense finally resorted to spear fishing.
Xavier Nady speared the Marlins' starter, Scott Olsen, with a liner that thunked off the big left-hander's foot to start the home seventh, and after Adam LaRoche's third hit of the game (.198!), Jose Castillo speared the second-base bag with an RBI single that put the Pirates ahead ever so briefly.
The fact that someone came in from the bullpen purporting to be Matt Capps and gave up a string of stinging zingers, including back-to-back RBI doubles to Miguel Cabrera and Josh Willingham, turning a desultory baseball drama inside out for the last time, did little to camouflage the uncomfortable truth well established to that point.
Zach Duke didn't deserve to win anyway.
The Pirates' opening day starter hasn't won in 51/2 weeks, and while last night's performance fit the always suspect dimensions of a quality start, the fit itself felt like new dress shoes. You can't wait to get out of 'em.
One cautionary note: Do not confuse the Duke's situation with tonight's final audition by Tony Armas, who's about to be kicked off the rotation for chronic ineffectiveness. Duke is nowhere near such jeopardy, but he surely didn't put any distance between himself and a similar fateful start last night.
Duke's first inning earned run average, for example, still looks too much like the price of parking, 13.00. It might be a sign that you're not headed for a stellar summer when you allow another first-inning run, as Duke did last night when Florida's leadoff hitter, one Reginald Damascus Abercrombie, rifled his fourth pitch into the Marlins' bullpen, and your first-inning ERA goes down.
In the Florida third, after LaRoche propped up Duke with his fourth homer and first as a Pirate at PNC Park, Duke waded through a 34-pitch inning that included 15 balls and four three-ball counts (including a seven-pitch tussle with the opposing pitcher). He avoided a 3-2 count to Cabrera only by presenting a 2-2 pitch that the slumping Cabrera trolley-wired to the right-field wall, putting Florida ahead again, 2-1. Cabrera was 0 for 16 to that point and sat out Tuesday's game in contemplation of the third-worst 0-fer of his career.
"Guys like that are going to hit," said Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez. "That kind of thing is going to happen; the best hitters in the game go 0 for 15 sometimes. Hopefully, he's had his and by the end of the year, he'll have his normal numbers."
Those would be 30 homers and 113 RBIs approximately, but it's getting harder and harder for the Pirates to figure out what the normal numbers are on Duke, much less count on him to fulfill them.
Only LaRoche's fine running catch of Hanley Ramirez's foul pop and the embattled first baseman's pretty stretch on Jack Wilson's throw in the long third inning kept Duke around for the middle innings, not that they were terribly more effective than the first three. LaRoche's part in keeping Duke around, which included a second tying liner in the fourth, was matched only by Wilson, whose brilliant defense saved the Pirates' starter in every inning but the fourth.
Duke left after the seventh, the only inning in which he did not allow a baserunner, having allowed eight hits, three of them for extra bases, and two walks. Since his dazzling 8-2 rookie season in 2005, he's 11-19.
Doubtless that has something to do with the way the Pirates hit behind him, and they put up another big "3" for him last night, the eighth time in his nine starts that the offense has scored three or less. By the same token, from the standpoint of the starting pitchers, this offense is an equal opportunity destroyer. It managed two hits last night until the spear-fishing seventh and goes into the series finale today having hit as many homers on this homestand as Florida's Dan Uggla hit Tuesday, two.
After scoring 20 runs in back-to-back games Sunday and Monday, the Pirates are back to their customary three-and-out. Not that I'm rushing the football season or anything. To win consistently, someone will have to pitch a lot better than Zach Duke did last night. Perhaps Zach Duke should.
First Published May 16, 2007 11:34 pm
