Rays Abuse Hung Over Pirates

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Every spring there is one get together where everyone cuts lose and parties the night away. Well, ok, two get togethers. One is the team's "official" party which was Saturday night for the Pirates; and two, every trip into Miami the players routinely take off the night after the first game to par-ty.

Those are two fundamental rituals in recent Pirates baseball history.

So the fact nobody was arrested for DUI, everyone is healthy, and the players found the park Sunday meant a lot more than most fans probably realize.

Winning the game was secondary to keeping their heads attached.

Tom Gorzelanny, who gave up drinking for Lent, had a 15 mph wind blowing in at the batter today and still gave up seven hits and five earned runs in five innings of work. He left the game with a 9.45 ERA and an 0-2 record in spring action.

Perhaps he will use the phrase "I was working on..."?

Gorzy's stat line is more worrisome than it looks. Three walks means he has now walked 14 batters in 20 innings of work. That's off the charts folks -- 6.4 walks per 9 - and makes Sean Burnett's 5.3 walks per 9 that got him reassigned to AAA look like gravy train.

But there are some clues developing about Gorzelanny. When he throws a lot of two-seam fastballs, he gets a lot of fly ball outs and he has pitched better. When he throws a lot of four-seam fastballs and gets a lot of ground balls, he has been getting hammered. So I suspect it is just a matter of a few more starts before he gets better movement on the four-seam fastball. Probably the same is true about Paul Maholm.

Jae Seo picked up the win for the Rays as the Pirates managed just five hits and two runs off him, despite what I'm sure were many pounding heads. Rays batters had a field day pounding out 12 hits, 12 runs, received 8 walks, and struck out 8 times.

Are the Rays really going to have Wigginton play second base this year? Oh my..

The real loser in Sunday's game, other than many of the Pirates' stomachs and heads, was Salomon Torres the Pirates wannabe closer, as he gave up four hits, three walks, and four runs scored off him as he could only muster one out in the 9th before being replaced by Franquelis Osoria.

Now that's a sad event a week before breaking camp, hang over or not.

While understanding that the day after the year's biggest party means almost nothing, it also signals the start of D-week where the players get very serious about their game, the front office chews and spits out reassignment notices by the dozens, and pitchers who throw more than 40 pitches wish they had taken another line of work as batters tee off on them as their arms fall off.

That's right, it's about a week before the start of the season so hang on tight Pirate fans as our team attempts to take it to the next level, where ever that may be.