More than anything, this was a James McDonald Game. McDonald had a 1-0 lead when he took the mound in the first inning. He walked two of the first three hitters, then gave up a double, then a home run. It looked like the Pirates were going to be stuck with J-Mac at his worst. Instead, McDonald set down nine of the ten hitters he faced in the second, third, and fourth innings, only allowing a walk to Gerardo Parra in the second. He got into a bit of trouble in the fifth when he gave up a Parra double and hit Aaron Hill with a pitch, but Garrett Jones bailed him out of trouble with a 3-6-3 double play.

To top it all off, McDonald came up with a huge hit in the fourth inning that helped key the Pirates' five-run rally that inning. When McDonald came up to the plate with runners on first and second in the second inning, Kirk Gibson put a wheel play on that resulted in McDonald bunting into a fielder's choice. When McDonald came up in the same situation in the fourth, Gibson made the same decision and McDonald pulled the bat back and slapped a single up the middle. McDonald, for reference, only had 13 hits in 135 big league plate appearances before tonight. 

After McDonald's slap single the Pirates had the bases loaded for Starling Marte, but were still down 4-1. Marte quickly fell behind in the count 0-2, which is a dangerous place for a young and somewhat undisciplined hitter to be in a big situation. Brandon McCarthy (who had pretty much nothing on the ball all night) apparently tried to finish Marte off with a high fastball (or maybe a cutter, if you believe Gameday) on the outside part of the plate. Marte inside-out-ed the ball down the first base line for a two run double. Neil Walker followed that up with a two-run single, finally getting a hard-hit ball to drop in somewhere. Garrett Jones added an RBI single for good measure. 

Of course, McDonald's ugly first inning limited his shelf life tonight and after walking Paul Goldschmidt to start the sixth, McDonald was done. That left four innings for a bullpen that went more than six last night. Except for one harrowing stretch in the seventh inning (Jared Hughes replaced Tony Watson with a runner on second and one out, then immediately walked two hitters, then gave up a screaming line drive to center that Andrew McCutchen initially misjudged and nearly turned into a three-run triple, but managed to recover and turn it into a harmless sac fly), everyone was up to the task. Tony Watson got a double play to clean up the small mess McDonald left him. Mark Melancon was absolutely nasty, throwing heavy 93 mph cutters that were dropping like medicine balls. He left Jason Kubel swearing at himself on a strikeout, then got Eric Chavez and Cliff Pennington to hammer grounders into the turf. Jason Grilli closed out the ninth for his second save in as many days. 

Two hits for Marte, three for Garrett Jones, two hits and a walk for Travis Snider, eleven hits and six runs total, a nice recovery by James McDonald after an ugly start, and some nice work by the bullpen. This is a little bit more like the Pirate team I was hoping to see in 2013. 

This isn't rocket science or anything, but the Pirates win yesterday would be made a lot better by a second win today. It'd give the Bucs a road series win, it'd bring their record up to 3-5, it'd put the lost weekend in LA one game further behind everyone. Today is particularly important since it's a James McDonald start, which is a crazy and unpredictable and really important thing for the Pirates. Brandon McCarthy, who got lit up in his season debut, goes for the Diamondbacks. First pitch tonight is at 9:40. 

After a full week of the Pirates getting strong starting pitching, shaky relief work in big spots, and absolutely zero offense, the Pirates went out and scored three runs in the first inning and put up a five spot (62.5% of the total runs scored in their first six games) for the game while the bullpen had to go 6 2/3 innings after Wandy Rodriguez left early with a hamstring problem in the third inning. This is exactly why I try not to get worked up over things a week into the season; after a full week of seeing one thing, suddenly we got nine innings of a game filled with something else entirely. 

The bullpen was great in this game, but I suppose the place to start is probably with the offense. Besides Andrew McCutchen's homer on Sunday, haven't done much of anything that didn't come against Carlos Marmol in almost a week. Then, in the first inning the Pirates got a Starling Marte single, an Andrew McCutchen double, a Pedro Alvarez walk, and a two-run Travis Snider single. Three hits! A walk! Someone helping Andrew McCutchen shoulder the load! When it seemed like the Pirates were destined to piss that lead away, Starling Marte tripled and McCutchen drove him home on a sacrifice fly. Runs in two different innings! Extra base hits from multiple sources! Clinging to a one run lead in the eighth inning, Garrett Jones hit a solo homer to pad the lead to the 5-3 final. Insurance runs! Dingers! 

Objectively, five runs isn't really a ton of runs and there will probably PLENTY of nights during the season where three runs in the first inning followed by two over the next seven will be frustrating. In our little April vacuum, though, this was nice. With another solid night from McCutchen and a couple of big hits from Marte and the Garrett Jones boomstick making an appearance, it almost feels like maybe it's the start of something. Of course, if you're the sort of person that doesn't get worked up over six games (like me), then you also shouldn't get too excited by one decent performance. On the other hand, what do we Pirate fans have to be encouraged about if we just leave the isolated decent performances by the wayside?

As much as I'd like to talk about the offense, though, I think the bigger story tonight is arguably the bullpen. Wandy Rodriguez left in the third inning with a runner on first and one out due to hamstring tightness. He got replaced by Jeanmar Gomez, who struggled to get out of the third and nearly got himself back into trouble in the fourth. As a result, the long relief duties fell to Justin Wilson. Wilson took over in the fifth and zipped through three easy innings, facing the minimum number of hitters thanks to a double play that erased a hit by pitch. I'm happy to see that Wilson is capable of such a strong performance; I've thought for a couple of years now that he'd be better suited to the bullpen than the rotation and early returns this year seem pretty strong. I will also keep the fact that I said last week that having Wilson on the roster should mean that someone Jeanmar Gomez is unnecessary under my hat. Wilson was followed by Mark Melancon, who's been excellent in his short Pirate career, and Jason Grilli. Wilson, Melancon, and Grilli went a combined five innings and faced 15 hitters, striking out five and only putting one guy on base. I know that people think I'm a little crazy for saying that the Pirates could have a pretty decent bullpen this year, but those three are a big part of the reason why I think that. The Pirates have some live arms in the bullpen this year, and tonight it certainly played to their advantage. 

Of course with it all said and done, what really happened was that the Pirates got five hits and saw their second most reliable starter leave the game early with a hamstring problem. It feels better than that, but the reason that small sample sizes get ignored is that this kind of thing tends to level out. The Pirates absolutely cannot afford to lose Rodriguez for any real stretch of time  and they really need to get more than two hits after the first inning every once in a while. For now, though, I'm happy to start with this and hope for good news on Rodriguez as the week wears on.

Through six games, the Pirates have scored eight runs and allowed 16. That puts them dead last in the NL in runs scored and second in runs allowed. They are 1-5. Through six games, the Diamondbacks have scored 37 runs and allowed 27. That puts them third in the NL in runs scored and ninth in runs allowed. They are 5-1. 

If we're being honest, right now I'm more concerned about the Pirates' immediate schedule than I am by the long-term implication of their inability to score runs. This season-opening stretch sucks and it's really painful to watch, but literally seven days ago I had the thought that the Pirates were probably somewhere around a league average offense (slightly below if things broke poorly, slightly above if things broke well) in the grand scheme of 2013, and I just can't get bent out of shape over six games, no matter how ugly they are. Concern is warranted, of course, but I just don't see a point in freaking out about this offense right at this second. That being said, the Pirates are playing a really ugly brand of baseball right now and even though this is the sort of thing that would probably only take one or two really good games to snap out of this early in the season, the Pirates' upcoming schedule is brutal. They've got a red hot, high scoring Diamondback team in a friendly offensive environment early this week, then the Reds, Cardinals, and Braves in a nine-game gauntlet run through some of the NL's best teams. After a four-game reprieve against the Phillies, it's the Cardinals again, the Vaunted Brewers, and then the Nationals.

I do think that the Pirates will play better eventually this year, but I will also say that if they don't start playing better soon, the first 31 games of this season are going to result in a really ugly mark in the win/loss column. Seriously: if the Pirates' don't right this ship quickly, things are going to be very very very bad. The sort of bad that managers and general managers that are already on the hot seat don't tend to recover from.

Tonight Wandy Rodriguez (who has the Pirates' only win!) will face Trevor Cahill (who has the Diamondbacks' only loss!). So ... favorable pitching matchup, for once! I guess.The first pitch is at 9:40. 

It seems like it was a million years ago, but last April the Pirates didn't score more than five runs in a game until April 30th when they put nine on the Braves in their 22nd game. They only even scored five runs four times in those first 21 games, as opposed to the nine games in which they scored one or zero runs. There are a number of things you can do with this information. You can note that even with such a terrible start, the Pirates (who are mostly composed of the same hitters now as they were then) managed to bounce back to the point that they had only a slightly-below average offense for the season in 2012 and were, at one point, 16 games over .500 before collapsing due to their pitching staff. You could say, "the Pirates only gave up 66 runs in 22 April games but went 10-12 and maybe if they'd scored some runs in April they could've won 83 or 84 games and at least we wouldn't have to worry about THAT anymore." 

Of course, for now none of that matters because the Pirates' offense has taken a week off and so they've started 2013 at 1-5. For a brief moment this afternoon, it seemed like maybe today was going to be different. Starling Marte started the game off against Hyun-Jin Ryu with a single, then Andrew McCutchen mashed a home run into left field to give the Pirates a 2-0 lead. Things did not look up for long. Jeff Locke gave that lead right back by giving up three hits in a row in the bottom of the first, then the Pirates only managed one more hit off of Ryu in his next 5 1/3 innings. Locke, meanwhile, got hit pretty hard and ended up giving up four runs in his six innings, at which point things were pretty much hopeless. 

There's no rest for the weary or the hitless; the Pirates will be in Arizona to play the 5-1 Diamondbacks tomorrow.

The Pirates have played five games thus far in 2013 and they've scored six runs. Three of those runs have come against Carlos Marmol, so they probably shouldn't count. Today, they'll face Hyun-Jin Ryu in his second start in America. Last week, he made his Dodger debut against Giants and served up 10 hits in 6 1/3 innings, despite only allowing one earned run. That's to say, "maybe the Pirates will have some luck against him today. Maybe." 

I was obviously wrong yesterday when I said that Jeff Locke was starting for the Pirates; he is, instead, making his 2013 debut today. Unless the offense perks up, he'll have to be very good today. The first pitch this afternoon is at 4:10.

Things are not going well right now. I suppose there's always tomorrow. Or later today, I guess.

Saying that the Pirates' offense has to start to get better soon is a true statement given how badly things have gone in the season's first four games, but Clayton Kershaw is starting for the Dodgers tonight, so maybe tomorrow is the day to hope for better. Jeff Locke gets the start for the Pirates. I'd say that if he can give the Bucs a start like Jonathan Sanchez did last night that that's probably the best that we can hope for, but if he gives up more than a run or two it's going to be trouble against Kershaw. First pitch tonight is 9:10. 

Jonathan Sanchez vs. Zack Greinke. West Coast trips never seem to go well.