Collier: Burst of hits appropriate, but bunts?
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Very gracious of Pirates hitters to try to make the 1971 alumni feel at home, posing as an offensively proficient ballclub in the early and late stages of the game Tuesday night against Baltimore, the one with the elaborate pregame ceremony honoring Pittsburgh's next-to-last world champions.
The present-day Pirates chased in three runs in the first, one in the second, one in the third, vintage Lumber Company stuff. Don't remember Danny Murtaugh's brain trust bunting the cleanup hitter too much (like ever), but that's what Andrew McCutchen found himself doing with nobody out and Garrett Jones standing on second with a two-run double.
'Cutch bunted Jones to third, and Neil Walker sacrificed him home on a flyball to the track in right, and you had to wonder if honored slashers such as Richie Hebner and Al Oliver, looking on from suite level, were at all intrigued by these swashbuckling sacrificers.
McCutchen, it turned out, bunted on his own.
"I give Andrew credit," manager Clint Hurdle said in the minutes after a four-game losing streak evaporated in the North Side humidity. "He's been hitting the ball good, but he thought in that situation he wanted to put a bunt down and move another runner up, and that's the way this team has been, unselfish. You've got to give him a pat on the back for that approach."
Teams that are becoming desperate offensively often resort to the unorthodox, but the current Pirates predicament straddles the very blade of a double-edge sword. You pretty much can't find a five-run early lead with a treasure map (only three of baseball's 30 teams, Washington, San Diego and Seattle have weaker hitting teams than Hurdle's), and, if you do, it isn't terribly safe.
Pirates starter James McDonald (J-Mac if you must, but if he's J-Mac, isn't McCutchen A-Mac, and Daniel McCutchen D-Mac, and who started all this anyway, J-Lo, or A-Rod? Perhaps I should ask the Pirates owner, B-Nutt) couldn't drag that five-run lead through five innings in which his WHIP took a terrible whipping.
Walks and hits per inning huh?
McDonald's night went like this after a 1-2-3 first: walk and a hit in the second, walk and a hit in the third, walk and a hit in the fourth, walk and four hits in the fifth, when Baltimore scored three times to cleave off 60 percent of the lead.
First Published June 22, 2011 12:00 am
