If ever there was a baseball game that you only needed the first inning to understand in its entirety, this one was it. Starling Marte lead the game off with hit a triple, which was aided by Brandon Phillips clearly not understanding how fast and completely fearless Starling Marte is once he starts running bases. Marte scored on an infield single by Russell Martin, which was aided by Zack Cozart and/or Joey Votto. After an Andrew McCutchen strikeout, Mat Latos walked Garrett Jones and Neil Walker. Pedro Alvarez then sent a fly ball in to the left field corner to score two runs (thanks to some poor Neil Walker baserunning, Alvarez ended up on first base and his hilariously low total of just five doubles on the season remained in stasis). That gave the Pirates a 3-0 lead. In the bottom of the first, Charlie Morton hit Shin-Soo Choo with the first pitch in the Name of Justice or Possibly Just Bad Control, got Cozart to bounce into a double play two pitches later, then got Joey Votto to fly out three pitches after that. 

Latos settled in after that bad first inning, but it didn't matter. Morton looked much better than he did in his debut, holding the Reds to just three hits and five base runners (he hit Choo and Xavier Paul). He struck out two hitters, got seven ground outs (two flyouts, for comparison), threw his fastball in the 93-96 range, and mixed in some great curveballs. I know that a lot of people roll their eyes when I say this, but I think that Morton's looked pretty good in his first two starts back. The added velocity on his fastball and sinker make him a much more dangerous pitcher than he was before his injury, and I think that he's someone that could help the Pirates this year. 

The first thing that a lot of people will notice in this one after the final score is that the Pirates struck out 17 times tonight against Latos and company. Any time a team racks up strikeouts like that it's wort noting, but I do think that it's also worth noting that the Pirates drew six walks tonight and that those six walks made a huge difference in this game in particular. The two walks in the first inning really drove that rally from one run to three runs, and a walk of Jordy Mercer in the seventh inning lead to the fourth run. On the flip side of the ball, the Pirates struck out ten Red hitters tonight and didn't walk even one of them (though of course HBPs don't count). That's not to say that they should keep on striking out seventeen times in a game, just that they faced off against a good pitcher in Latos and that they did some things very well and that helped bring the Pirates a solid win against a very good baseball team. I'll take that.

I'm not particuarly interested in the Pirates-Reds HBP shenanigans that have gone on over the last two seasons. It seems pretty obvious to me that the Reds are the schoolyard bully of the NL Central, particularly when it comes to Aroldis Chapman and Dusty Baker. I don't know that they're particularly far into the Pirates' heads in the way that the Brewers seemed to be until a couple of weeks ago (the Pirates are 4-3 against the Reds this year), but I think that it'd be understandable if the team was awfully frustrated after Chapman buzzed Neil Walker's skull in the ninth inning of a mostly-decided game last night. 

There are, of course, two ways that the Pirates can handle this. One is to throw a baseball at Brandon Phillips or Joey Votto or Jay Bruce to show that they won't be intimidated by the Reds' shenanigans. The other is to kick the ever-loving crap out of the Reds in a baseball game, which has pretty much the same effect. I don't particularly care if the first one happens or not. If the Pirates want to go down that road tonight, so be it. I only hope that they're smart enough about it that they don't get Charlie Morton or one of their key relievers suspended for any significant amount of time. I'm more invested in the second one; the Reds are one hell of a good baseball team and they're directly competing with the Pirates for two different playoff spots. It seems to me like they're trying to flex their muscles on the pesky upstart Pirates here. If Brandon Phillips gets a fastball between the numbers tonight but the Reds win three of four games in this series, the Reds will have accomplished what they set out to do. 

In any case, Charlie Morton gets his second start of 2013 tonight. I thought that his first start was just a tad more promising than most Pirate fans did because his velocity looked so good compared to the past and because his curveball seemed as wicked as it ever has. This game is going to be an interesting test for Morton because in the past, he struggled with his sinker against left-handed hitters and the Reds employ Shin-Soo Choo, Jay Bruce, and Joey Votto. Before his injury he tried to use a cutter against lefties with mixed results. He didn't throw even one cutter in his first start against the Giants last week. It's possible that he (and the coaching staff) thinks that with a 93-95 mph fastball/sinker that he'll be more effective against lefties than he was with a 90-92 mph fastball/sinker. We'll see. I could tell you that I'm nervous but kind of optimistic, but you probably already know that. That describes how I feel every time Charlie Morton has ever taken the mound. 

Mat Latos pitches for the Reds tonight. There are a number of reasons to want to beat Mat Latos, including but not limited to 1.) He is pitching against the Pirates, 2.) He is a Red, 3.) I don't know him or anything but he sure does kind of seem like a bit of a jerk. 

First pitch is at 7:10. Important baseball games are fun, at as far as June 18th goes, this is a pretty big one. 

It became apparent shortly after this year's MLB Draft that at least one of the Pirates' two first-rounders was going to be a no-drama signing. That one was Reese McGuire, and now that he's all graduated from high school he officially signed with the Pirates for a $2.37 million signing bonus, which is slightly below slot-value for the 14th pick. Signing so quickly means that McGuire will benefit from just about a full season in the Gulf Coast League, which starts at the end of this week. 

There's no word on Austin Meadows just yet, though I still don't see a reason to think that he's not going to sign with the Pirates by the July 12 deadline.

This is about as frustrating as losses get. The Pirates went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position tonight against Mike Leake, Tony Cingrani, and Aroldis Chapman. Francisco Liriano turned in one of his smoother starts as a Pirate (six innings, 84 pitches, six strikeouts, five hits, two walks), except that two of the hits he gave up were solo home runs. Bryan Morris followed that up with two solo home runs allowed in the eighth inning, which provided the game with its final margin. 

That's not to say the game was without highlights for the Pirates; there was Liriano's strong start, Starling Marte's ridiculous full-extension diving catch to rob Brandon Phillips of an RBI extra base hit (I don't think I can aptly describe this catch; Marte appeared to be shaded a bit towards center and Phillips hit a line drive to left, Marte covered a ton of ground and laid completely out to catch the liner as it both sunk and sliced away from him), and some great Andrew McCutchen high-speed base running to score on Russell Martin's double in the fourth. 

Because the Pirates lost, the main topic of discussion after this one is certainly going to be that Andrew McCutchen was hit by a Mike Leake pitch in the fourth inning (the second time he's been hit by a Red pitcher this year and the third time it's happened over the last two years out of nine total HBPs for McCutchen in that span), the Neil Walker was brushed back by an Aroldis Chapman fastball in the general vicinity of his face. The Pirates chose not to respond to Leake's HBP of McCutchen since it came on an 0-2 pitch and the game was, until the eighth inning, an extremely close game were base runners mattered. It was clear that Chapman's pitch to Walker riled the Pirates up some, though. Usual Dusty Baker protocol in this situation will be to come back and hit a Pirate early in the game tomorrow, which will prompt a warning that will then freeze the Pirates from retaliating by hitting his players. I normally don't get too wrapped up in this kind of thing -- baserunners are bad and giving the opponent baserunners is a bad idea -- but it's really frustrating to watch the Reds pull this kind of stunt pretty much at will. I'm sure that the Pirates feel the same way.

The last time the Pirates played teams with a record similar to theirs, they dropped five out of six to the Reds and Braves in what was their worst stretch of baseball since the season's first week. It's worth noting that evne thought they've bounced back from that ugly stretch with three straight series wins, they're still below .500 in their last 15 games because of how poorly those six games against the Reds and Braves went. 

There's no such thing as must-win baseball games in June, of course, because with so many games ahead on the schedule a team can always play themselves out of slumps and get wins back. Still, I think it's important for this Pirate team to avoid too many stumbling blocks like that. This week is a pretty big test for them; they've got four games on the road against one of baseball's best teams and they're starting Francisco Liriano, Charlie Morton, Jeff Locke, and Brandon Cumpton in those four games. A split here would be a wonderful result for this Pirate team and more than that would be a pretty huge deal. 

The rotation problems that the Pirates have right now put some pressure on Liriano; he was signed because he's a talented guy with a high ceiling and because with AJ Burnett and Wandy Rodriguez, he wouldn't have to be "the guy" in the Pirates' rotation. With three young/unpredictable pitchers in the rotation now along with Jeff Locke, Liriano's the closest thing they have to a proven starter. A big outing from him tonight could go a long ways towards establishing a good tone for this nine-game road trip. 

It's also worth noting that Jordy Mercer is in the lineup for the fifth time in six games tonight, and that Clint Hurdle more or less indicated before the game that Mercer is going to get the bulk of the playing time at shortstop going forward. I thought that David Manel's take on this over the weekend was a very good one; that the Pirates need to be mindful of the benefit that Barmes's glove has given to their pitching staff this year, but his bat is so bad that it nearly cancels that advantage and that they need to start phasing Mercer in this year to really understand if he's an option to play short regularly in 2014 and beyond. This is a new situation for the Pirates; in the past it was easy to dump a veteran on the bench for a young player with no concern for how it affected the team's short-term performance. Of course, if Mercer keeps hitting, this is a moot point -- he'll be the better player for the Pirates both in the moment and in the long-term. Let's hope for that. 

The first pitch tonight is at 7:10. Mike Leake is starting for the Reds. 

It's Father's Day and the Pirates are halfway to 82 wins. They got their 41st win today when Zack Greinke left a 3-2 curveball up in the middle of the zone and Pedro Alvarez whacked it out into the bushes in center field, breaking a 2-2 tie in the bottom of the fifth. Gerrit Cole ran into trouble in the sixth and gave the Dodgers a run back, but Alex Presley immediately leveled that out with a solo homer in the sixth. Justin Wilson worked out of the jam Cole left in the sixth, then pitched an easy seventh before Mark Melancon and Jason Grilli closed down the eighth and ninth for the win. 

Of course, Cole's the big story in this game and he probably will be every single time he takes the mound this year. If you, like me, expected to see Cole throw some more breaking balls and changeups today, you were probably a little frustrated with his performance this afternoon. Cole threw 80 pitches today and somewhere between 67 and 69 of them were four-seam fastballs. His velocity was incredible again (those four-seamers averaged 97 mph) and the control was quite good with just about two of every three fastballs crossing the plate for a strike. He had trouble getting his breaking ball (it looked like it was the same pitch that he called a curve after his first start on Tuesday, though it gets classified as a slider by the Gameday software) across the plate and so didn't use it all that often. He only threw it nine times total on Sunday. 

Much like his debut start against the Giants, he jammed a lot of hitters, broke some bats, induced a ton of weak contact, found himself dealing with base runners fairly often, and couldn't pitch deep into the game because after seeing his fastball for 5+ innings the Dodgers started making solid contact. 

I thought one at-bat was particularly illustrative of the troubles that are going to plague Cole until he starts relying on his secondary pitches and generating strikeouts. It came in the top of the second with Tim Federowicz at the plate, Yaisal Puig on third base, and one out. With a 2-0 lead, Cole needed a strikeout of Federowicz. He should've been able to get one; Federowicz is basically a Quad-A catcher that had 19 strikeouts in 59 plate appeparances coming into the game today. After throwing a breaking ball for ball one, Cole came back with two fastballs at 97 and 96. Federowicz took the first one and fouled the second one off. Cole threw two more curves out of the zone to run the count full, then Federowicz bounced a fastball to Jordy Mercer for a run-scoring groundout. Cole couldn't throw the curve for a strike, which caused the count to go full and left him without the confidence to throw it in a full count situation. As a result, he didn't get the strikeout he needed and the run scored. 

I don't mean this to be a serious criticism of Cole at this point; he's only in his second big league start, he's only a few weeks removed from a disastrous Triple-A start, and he's been pretty effective against both the Giants and Dodgers with basically only one pitch working for him. The Pirates probably would have preferred to keep him in Triple-A for another month or so until he felt comfortable with his breaking ball, but he's close enough to ready and their pitching situation is dire enough that there's no other option. Whenever a pitcher pitches well with a low strikeout total, though, the conversation inevitably turns to why a pitcher needs strikeouts. At-bats like that Federowicz at-bat are why. Innings like the fourth inning, where the Dodgers made no solid contact but ended up with three hits and a run, are why. 

Of course, those are concerns for the next Gerrit Cole start. Through two starts, he's pounded the strike zone with a blazing fastball that's been difficult for opponents to hit solidly. His great control (he still hasn't walked a hitter) has minimized the damage done by hits that he has given up, which have been mostly soft singles. He's started twice and given the Pirates a chance to win twice. He needs to find more confidence in his off-speed stuff because teams are eventually going to start sitting on that fastball, but that fastball certainly is a nice crutch to have until he gets there.

One of the most interesting aspects to me of Gerrit Cole being put in the Pirate rotation slightly ahead of schedule is that it's going to force him to grow as a pitcher pretty quickly. I think that he could've pitched for forever in Triple-A the way that he did on Tuesday: hammer the zone with fastballs to get ahead in the count, then use well-placed fastballs and breaking balls to finish hitters off. His fastball is so good that most Triple-A guys can't catch up to it, so even when they know it's coming it results in a foul ball or weak contact at best. That will not be true of Major League hitters. Cole faced 27 hitters in his big league debut; by the time the Giants finished their second time through the order, they were waiting for Cole's fastball and lining it all over the park. 

As I wrote earlier in the week, I'm fine with the strategy of pounding fastballs to get ahead in the count  to help Cole get settled into a role in a Major League rotation, but I'm not sure how long it can be successful. Cole only threw a couple of changeups on Tuesday and he basically only threw his breaking ball when he was ahead in the count. I don't think that Cole needs to come out firing with five pitches this afternoon or anything, but I do think that if he'll probably need to sequence his pitches a little differently and throw his changeup more regularly.

Anyway, that's not a criticism of Cole's start, just an observation. He's obviously talented and driven enough to be able to adapt pretty quickly. I'm excited to watch it happen. First pitch is at 1:35. 

For the second time in one turn of their rotation, the Pirates are going to put a starting pitcher on the mound with absolutely no big league experience. Brandon Cumpton makes his big league debut today out of necessity more than anything; with AJ Burnett and Wandy Rodriguez and Jeanmar Gomez and Kyle McPherson and Phil Irwin on the disabled list and James McDonald struggling during his rehab outing, someone has to be the Pirates fifth starter. 

So who is Brandon Cumpton? He was the Pirates tenth round pick in 2010 out of Georgia Tech, so he's not one of the high school pitching prospects that we spend so much time discussing. Really, Cumpton's whole trip through the minors has been of the solid-but-unspectacular sort. He's been pretty reliably promoted (State College in 2010, West Virginia and Bradenton in 2011, Altoona in 2012, Indianapolis this year) with decent results. His minor league ERA is 3.85, his strikeout rate is 5.8 K/9, his walk rate is 2.6 BB/9, and his homer rate is a nice 0.6 HR/9. His numbers at Indy this year have tracked pretty close to that; his and strikeout rates are slightly better (3.31 and 6.8, respectively), but his walk rate is higher (3.0) which leaves him with the same K/BB ratio. 

Tim's got a nice writeup of what to expect from Cumpton tonight; low 90s sinking fastball, slider, and changeup. I don't think there's much of a ceiling here, but I'll repeat what I said when Phil Irwin started earlier in the year; there's a good chance that Cumpton's at least got enough stuff to keep the Dodgers and whoever else off balance for a start or two before the league really starts to get a book on him. The Pirates don't need Cumpton to be Gerrit Cole; they need him to make maybe two or three starts and to keep the Pirates in the game. That's all they need. I don't know if they'll get that, but it doesn't seem impossible.

Of course, Cumpton's first start has the degree of difficulty ratcheted way, way up. His mound opponent is Clayton Kershaw, who's obviously one of the best lefties in baseball. Because Jose Tabata is on the disabled list and Starling Marte is battling an oblique injury that might land him there, as well, that means that lefty Alex Presley is leading off, that Brandon Inge is in right field, and that Pedro Alvarez won't be able to get the afternoon off against Kershaw. All of this worries me. 

The first pitch this afternoon is at 4:05. I'm headed off to Durham tonight to watch Indianapolis play, so I'll probably miss the second half of the game.

For at least the next turn or two, the Pirates' rotation is going to look something like this: Jeff Locke, Brandon Cumpton, Gerrit Cole, Francisco Liriano, Charlie Morton. This is pretty far from what anyone thought the rotaiton would look like in mid-June. That includes Charlie Morton and Brandon Cumpton, I think. And yet, here we are. Despite this avalanche of injuries, the Pirates are 12 games above .500 and they're still the odds-on favorite for the NL's second wild card. 

That means that for now, the Pirates need to find a way to tread water until Wandy Rodriguez and AJ Burnett make their way back to the rotation. I think it's doable; certainly this makeshift rotation is a lot more talented than the makeshift rotations of the past. This weekend the Pirates get a middling and expensive Dodger team that just got slammed with a bunch of suspensions. Two wins in this series should be doable. Win two, and move on from there. 

Jeff Locke has been a little shaky lately. The Pirates need him to be better tonight. Stephen Fife goes for the Dodgers. He's only made a few starts for them this year, but they've been a pleasant surprise for the Dodgers. Maybe the Pirate offense can bring him back to earth some. First pitch tonight is at 7:05.