Gorzelanny Cruises to 8th Win

Tom Gorzelanny pitched a solid game to pick up his 8th win of the year against the Washington Nationals who managed just five hits and two runs off him.

The win guarantees the Pirates their first yearly series win against the Nats/Expos since 2000, and their second series win in a row. The Pirates are now 16-18 (.471) in their last 34 games.

The Nats scored a run in the first with a Zimmerman double and a Young single scoring him, and Belliard hit a solo shot home run leading off the sixth. Masumi Kuwata pitched 1.2 innings in relief of Gorzelanny and shut the door with a double play in the 8th on one pitch and not allowing a hit in the 9th.

The Pirates offense exploded in the 2cd when Nady singled, Doumit doubled, Paulino walked, Wilson hit a two rbi single, McLouth was intentionally walked, Sanchez singled home two more, and LaRoche cleared the based scoring two more with a right centerfield gap shot that went for a double. Six runs scored overall as Bergmann labored throwing 45 pitches in the inning.

LaRoche added another run when he crushed a Schroder pitch into the right centerfield stands with nobody on in the 5th.

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Duke is said to have inflammation in his left elbow and is not expected to make his Tuesday start against the Brewers. That's perfectly ok with Pirate fans who have watched him get hammered by the Brewers this year (8.00 ERA, 2.11 WHIP).

Now the question becomes, who makes the start? You have to assume it will be a right hand pitcher since the Brewers have been choking on them, so I have to believe it will be either Wasdin (God forbid), or Chacon going no more than 60 - 70 pitches.

I suspect we'll probably see Duke eventually put on the DL Burnett finally brought up. Just a guess since the Pirates promoted Bouknight to Indy today as well. The Pirates are seemingly planning to promote an Indy starter - the question is who.

Bullington's arm isn't anywhere near ready to be brought up yet even though he is pitching better than Burnett, so look for Burnett if his arm is healthy enough. This move the Pirates make will define what they plan to do with Burnett.

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Coming into Saturday night's game, the Pirates cleanup position is batting a woeful .224.

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Jim Tracy had an interview with a Washington radio station where he said he was very pleased where the team was right now because they have won 8 games more than they did at this time in 2006. He felt that if the team played .514 baseball in the second half this year like last year, they very well could be in the division race.

I'm not so sure I buy that, but ok. Let's see how we handle the Brewers and Cubs next week on our own turf first.

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I tip my hat to FSN for talking about the protest during the broadcast. Not only did they show the fans in the seats before and after the third inning, they were also pretty fair about how many left at the end of the inning (hundreds to perhaps a thousand or more).

One thousand walking out of twenty-seven thousand in the stands is 4% which is not a strong showing by any means. Even if 5,000 had walked away from their seats, I'm afraid the message would still have been weak. The ownership group knows 99.9% of the fans are not happy - make no mistake about that. And I still say if you aren't happy with their product, don't buy it.

But walkouts don't work.

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I also have a lot of new found respect for Bob Nutting who ventured down to his home plate seat during the start of the third inning to be visibly present during the walkout. That took guts - I'll hand that to him.

Just don't give the fans anymore cheesy statements Bob like 'we all want to win.' You know it's time to put a few dollars where your mouth is, whether it's in scouting, coaching and development like rovers, or free agent acquisitions to field a reasonably competitive product.