The Pirates built a 5 – 1 lead early for A.J. Burnett against the Reds, but needed a 7th inning homer from Andrew McCutchen to come away with the 6 -5 victory.
Starling Marte continued to thrive leading-off the Pirates half of the first with his sixth opening frame hit of the season. He would follow that up by stealing second easily. Neil Walker would walk and Andrew McCutchen would advance Marte on a sac fly to right. Marte would not score, though, as he would be thrown out on a Garret Jones ground ball to first. The Pirates wouldn’t completely squander the opportunity as Russell Martin would record his first RBI as a Bucco, scoring Walker to make it 1 – 0.
The Reds would quickly get the run back as Brandon Phillips would lead the second inning off with a mammoth shot to center off of Burnett to square things up at 1. “Well, he hit a mistake, and that’s what big league players do. You leave balls over the middle and their going to dispose of them”, said Burnett.
The Buccos would get back into the run column (in a big way) in the second as Walker and Cutch would get back-to-back 2RBI singles to make it 5 – 1. Travis Snider, Clint Barmes, and Garrett Jones would single in the inning and Marte would be hit by a pitch (unintentional).
The Reds would get one back in the 4th by way of a Devin Mesoraco RBI groundout scoring Jay Bruce to cut the lead to 5 – 2. Burnett would pitch a scoreless 5th but couldn’t do the same in the 6th as he allowed a 2-out RBI double by Mesoraco to make it 5 – 3. He would get Mike Leake to pop out to second to end the inning and his night.
A.J. had a decent outing despite the 3 runs. He struck out 8 bringing his season total to 27 after three outings. He also stands at 1,998 K’s for his career after tonight’s start. “It would mean a lot. (About getting to 2,000) That’s a lot of K’s and just shows you how good the guys with 3,000 are”, said Burnett.
Hurdle would hand the ball over to Tony Watson for the 7th. He would get the first two outs sandwiched between a walk. Brandon Phillips would then come up and hit his second homer to dead center field to tie things up at 5.
Cutch would lead off the bottom of the 7th and give the Buccos the lead right back with a homer to left on a 1 – 2 curveball to make it 6 – 5. “I was ready to go”, said Cutch. ”I came up the next inning and was ready to deliver and the pitching was able to do their job.”
Mark Melancon would pitch a perfect 8th and Jason Grilli would come in and get his 4th save of the season (on National Grilled Cheese Day) by striking out Phillips with a 3 – 2 breaking ball with runners on first and second. “Melancon has come out as clean as anybody to start the season and Grilli is right behind him”, said manager, Clint Hurdle. ”I like the way its set up”.
Pirates win 6 – 5 and will look to take the series tomorrow night at 7:05.
Starters Lines:
Burnett (ND) – 6 IN, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 3 BB, 8 K’s, 2 WP, 1 HR
Leake (ND) – 6 IN, 10 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 2 BB, 2 K’s, 1 HB
Tomorrows Starters:
(PIT) Jeff Locke (0 – 1, 6.00 ERA)
(CIN) Johnny Cueto (1 – 0, 2.77 ERA)
