This game was about as tough to watch as baseball games come. Undistinguished rookie Jonathan Pettibone shut the Pirates down over his 5 1/3 innings, striking out six Bucs and walking none. The only runs the Pirates managed against him (or anyone on the Phillies' staff) were two solo homers by Pedro Alvarez and Russell Martin. They went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position, including leaving the tying run at second base with one out in the ninth. In fact, three doubles 

AJ Burnett, meanwhile, labored mightily through his five innings. His fourth inning was particularly excruciating to watch. He loaded the bases up after the first three hitters in the inning, then took ten pitches to strike Erik Kratz out, then struck Pettibone out on four pitches, then hit Jimmy Rollins in the foot to bring a run in anyway. I didn't have a stopwatch out or anything, but I think the inning took about 10 hours in total. Burnett ended up needing 35 pitches and he technically struck out the side, which made it all but certain that the bullpen was going to have another long night. 

Martin's homer tied the game up after that, but then Jared Hughes came into the tie game in the sixth and gave up a run to put the Phillies back ahead. That lead to a mystifying sequence of decisions made by Clint Hurdle in the seventh and eighth that lead to Clint Barmes making the final out of the seventh, then being double-switched out for John McDonald who promptly lead off the eighth. Both guys struck out, while Gaby Sanchez never made it off the bench and Alex Presley was used as a pinch runner. How can that be allowed to happen? Antonio Bastardo was on the mound to face Barmes; why not use Sanchez right there? 

This game contained exactly one highlight beyond the two homers. With Chase Utley on first base, the Pirates elected to still put a heavy infield shift on for Ryan Howard. Howard hit a sharp grounder between first and second that John McDonald expertly picked out of the dirt. Of course, when your shortstop is playing between first and second with a runner on third base, that means that the double play is going to have to be turned by the third baseman. The third baseman who, in this case, was Pedro Alvarez. McDonald made a nice toss to Alvarez, who nabbed the throw, nimbly floated over the base, and threw a rocket of a strike to first base as if it was the most natural thing in the world. That's probably going to be the only part of this game that I remember for more than 48 hours, and I'm OK with that.

The Pirates are 10-8. They're hitting the ball well and besides uneven starting pitching, playing a brand of baseball that I think we can fairly call "very good" over the last two weeks. They're coming off of a 7-2 homestand against the Reds, Cardinals, and Braves. Still, it feels like they're stuck in a sort of no man's land right now. Francisco Liriano is about 10 days away from re-joining the rotation, Charlie Morton is probably somewhere between two and three weeks off, and Gerrit Cole's ETA of early June has been put into question by his wild start with Indianapolis. Those three represent the Pirates' best chance to add arms to the rotation; until they're ready, Jonathan Sanchez, James McDonald, and Jeff Locke will continue to take 60% of the Pirates' starts. The team has managed to weather that to this point, but how long can a team win a majority of its games when its bullpen is called into serious action every night?

That's why this road trip feels so important, I think. On the other end of it, Liriano will be ready to rejoin the rotation and Morton, should he be needed, won't be far behind. The Pirates are playing good baseball and they're fun to watch, but after the last two seasons we Pirate fans know what's sustainable and what's not and what happened on this homestand doesn't feel sustainable because of the volatile nature of the starting pitching. If the Pirates can keep it going for ten more days on the road, until they can get to a more stable rotation, though? Well, then we'll see. 

Luckily for the Pirates, this road trip starts out with a bit of a breather in Philadelphia. On pre-season paper, the Phillies projected out to be the same as or a little worse than the Pirates this year. In actual results, they're 8-11. Not only are they 8-11, but with John Lannan hurt they've had to call up Jonathan Pettibone to make a start tonight. Pettibone's 22 years old and was a third round pick in 2008. He's not a top prospect. His minor league league strikeout rate is very unimpressive (6.4/9 innings). His two starts with Triple-A this year have gone poorly and even in his seven decent Triple-A starts last year, he walked 4.7 hitters per nine innings. He's not very good, is what I'm saying, and the sort of team that can beat Tim Hudson, Paul Maholm, and Kris Medlen in successive games should also be able to beat Jonathan Pettibone. AJ Burnett, who currently leads the Majors with 35 strikeouts and with his ridiculous 13.3 K/9 rate goes for the Pirates. 

First pitch tonight is at 7:05. Because the Penguins are on ROOT, the Pirates will be on MLB Network if you live in the Pittsburgh area. 

I was excited to watch Gerrit Cole pitch on Sunday afternoon. When the Minor League season started, I bought the MiLB.tv package for the first time since it's come into existence, mainly for the purpose of watching Cole and Jameson Taillon pitch this year (I debate buying it every year, but only the teams in the high minors are regularly broadcast and Indianapolis is usually a boring team save a position prospect or two, so I usually decide it's not worth the money). Due to a combination of factors, I missed most of Cole's first three starts, but since I was planning on watching the Pirates on Sunday anyway. 

Before I get started, I'll point out that the usual caveats apply here: I'm not a scout, nor do I ever pretend to be one. There are often things that minor league players, prospects in particular, are working on behind the scenes and that's not knowledge that I'm privy to. The Indianapolis announcers, for example, mentioned several times that Cole seemed to be throwing a lot of off-speed pitches on Sunday. That could be because he felt his fastball command was bad, or that could be because the Pirates told him to work on his changeup because he'll need it to succeed at the big league level. Also, my watching was limited to the Indianapolis broadcast, which has a pretty poor viewing angle (think PNC Park before the excellent new centerfield camera) and didn't display the pitch speed (or if they did, didn't do so in a way I could see it in the crappy MiLB.tv iPhone app blown up to iPad size, which left a hanging menu bar covering the top of the screen), which often made it hard to figure out what pitch Cole was throwing. I'm not complaining about these things, mind you. I'm watching the Pirates' best prospect pitch in a minor league game on a futuristic touch screen computer for $20 a year. Life is pretty amazing here in the 21st century. I'm simply making you, the reader, aware of my viewing conditions this afternoon. 

Now that that's out of the way, what I can tell you about Cole this afternoon is that his line for the game sums it up pretty well. He went four innings, didn't give up a run, and only allowed one hit, but he also on struck two hitters out and he walked five guys. He threw 85 pitches and only 49 strikes. Of those 85 pitches, 34 came in the fourth inning, when he walked the bases loaded. In that third inning, Louisville hit nine foul balls off of Cole and had zero swinging strikes. Going back through the Gameday notations I count 19 foul balls off of Cole today, compared with only four swinging strikes. That's a really bad ratio for any starter, particularly for one that's supposed to be as dominant as Cole is. That being said, I don't think that Louisville hit one ball squarely all afternoon. All of their outs were soft groundballs or pop-ups or soft liners. The only hit that they had off of Cole was a bunt straight back to Cole by speedster Billy Hamilton that probably would've been an out, had Matt Hague not inexplicably charged in on the ball leaving first base unattended. 

Because the broadcast made it difficult to tell pitch from pitch, my best guess is that Cole was focusing on off-speed stuff and had poor command of it, which left hitters waiting on fastballs and able to foul them away all afternoon. Cole didn't really look all that bad until the fourth inning, though he didn't look all that good up to that point, either. After the first two outs of the inning and a long at-bat against Emmanuel Burris that ended up in a walk, Cole just ran out of gas. That happened in his last start around the 90 pitch mark, too, and he didn't have a 30+ pitch inning to deal with in that game.

I don't want to sound too alarmist about this, because as I said, I'm not a scout and there are a lot of things about the start that we don't really know. As hard as Cole was to watch and as ugly as that final line is, I think Cole was probably closer to having a dominant outing than he was to having a truly disastrous one. It honestly seemed like Louisville just sat on Cole's fastball and more or less knew it was coming and they still couldn't hit him hard at any point. Starting around the 1:08 mark (or thereabouts) of last week's Fringe Average podcast there's a discussion of Matt Harvey and why he's exploded onto the scene at the big league level after good-but-not-elite minor league numbers, with one possibly explanation being that the Mets simply had him focusing on different things in the minors and have since unleashed him at the big league level. The point is, though, that no one saw Harvey coming on the way that he has (he was Baseball America's pre-season #54 prospect) because there was something going on behind the scenes that no one was allowed to see. Then, around the 1:15 mark there's talk about a bad outing by Kevin Gausman and how minor leaguers sometimes have trouble pitching around not having their best stuff. I think both of those discussions are relevant to Cole. 

The greater point for now, though is this: Gerrit Cole is not ready to pitch at the Major League level. He's not at Triple-A for any reason other than that he needs to be at Triple-A. Cole has the sort of talent that could change this very quickly, but it's absolutely true right now. He'll most likely pitch again on Friday night, which means that I probably won't watch him live, but I'm curious to see how the foul ball to swinging strike ratios change for his next outing. If these control problems early in the season are a result of him working on off-speed stuff, then hopefully the results will start to swing in his favor soon.

Here is Jonathan Sanchez's line from this afternoon: 

3 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 3 BB, 5 K

And here is Kris Medlen's line: 

6 IP, 7 H, 3R, 1 BB, 6 K

That's not a line that would seem to bear well for the Pirates, but they found a way anyway today, mostly on the bullpen and on Russell Martin. The bullpen was excellent today. Combined, they went six shutout innings, struck out eight, walked four, and gave up four hits. Jeanmar Gomez went 2 1/3 and struck out three hitters, which was nice to see after he opened the year with just one strikeout in his first seven innings. Justin Wilson relieved him in the sixth with runners on first and second and one out and immediately got BJ Upton to bounce into a double play. Wilson got the first two outs in the seventh, but came out when Evan Gattis doubled off of him to make way for Jared Hughes. Hughes struck Chris Johnson out on four pitches. Tony Watson came in in the eighth and was perfect. Jason Grilli allowed a leadoff walk in the ninth, then slammed the door shut on the Braves for his seventh save and ninth straight scoreless outing. 

Of course, the Pirates needed runs to make the bullpen's effort matter. They came from a strange place today. In the second inning, after the Braves went up 2-0, the Pirates strung three hits together; a single by Pedro Alvarez, a double into the Notch by Russell Martin, and an RBI single by Clint Barmes. That was Barmes's first RBI of 2013. His second came much sooner, breaking the 2-2 tie in the sixth inning with a tweener single that scored Neil Walker. The final run came in the seventh when Travis Snider, who had a single, a double, and a walk, scored on a wild pitch. 

I singled Russell Martin out above, and it wasn't just for his RBI double that opened the scoring or for his third two-hit game of the Atlanta series. He made a big difference in the field today, too. In the first inning he completed a strike 'em out, throw 'em out double play after Jonathan Sanchez walked Ramiro Pena to end the inning, then he pulled the same feat again in the seventh (literally: Justin Upton was the strike out victim, Ramiro Pena was the baserunner) to bail Justin Wilson out of a tight spot. He's thrown out five would-be basestealers this year, which is just one less than Rod Barajas nailed in 104 games as a Pirate last year.

Finally, Martin put on an absolute pitch-framing clinic late in this game. Pitch-framing is one of those nuances in baseball that it seems like it's impossible to get a consensus on. On one hand, it does seem clear that some catchers get more strikes than others year after year after year. On the other, doesn't it seem a little crazy to think that the way that Russell Martin catches the ball as a catcher could possibly be worth two wins over the course of the season compared the way that Rod Barajas catches the ball? Because pitch-framing is something that's almost impossible to visualize, I'll point out the two pitches jumped out at me in real time during this game. Watch how Martin handles the first pitch to Chris Johnson in the seventh, which crosses the plate a little bit high and a little outside. The Pirates get the strike call anyway, and that sets Jared Hughes up with an 0-1 count and lets him keep the ball low and away from Johnson for the rest of the at-bat. Watch how he handles the 1-2 pitch to BJ Upton in the ninth inning -- a pitch that obviously crossed the plate out of the strike zone but was instead called for strike three on an incredulous Upton. Both pitches were absolutely textbook receiving by Martin from his still-as-a-statue head to the ever-so-subtle glove curl. You can do what you like with this, but when people say that Martin is an excellent pitch-framer these are the pitches that they're talking about. I thought that it was something that made a noticeable difference in a couple of high-leverage situations for the Pirates today. 

We're three full weeks into the season and the Pirates are 10-8. After their 1-5 start, they're 9-3. On their nine-game homestand against some of the NL's best teams (Cincy, St. Louis, Atlanta), they were 7-2. This is all fantastic stuff, but the road doesn't get easier from here. Without the benefit of an off-day until May 2nd, the Pirates will go on the road to play four games in Philadelphia, three in St. Louis, and three in Milwaukee. 

It's easy to look at today's game and see Jonathan Sanchez and Kris Medlen on the mound and to say, "Well, the Pirates are 6-2 on this homestand already and they took two games in a row from a team that only lost twice in their first 15 games and so a loss this afternoon wouldn't be the end of the world." That's all true, of course, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to see even more from the Pirates. 

As much as the Pirates have tried to prove otherwise in 2011 and 2012, games in April count just as much in the final standings as games in August and September. The Pirates are playing really good baseball right now; they're getting hits from all over the lineup, they're fielding well, the bullpen has been mostly lights out, and even the questionable rotation has been solid more often than it's been shaky. These things don't hold true for 162 games, even for the best teams in baseball. That means that when a team is playing well, it's important to win as many games as possible. 

Medlen vs. Sanchez is a mismatch, make no mistakes about it. But Medlen has a been a little more human this year than he was last year. In his 19 innings, he's only got nine strikeouts and he's given up 15 hits and walked six batters against the less-than-stellar competition of the Phillies, Marlins, and Royals. He hasn't given up a ton of runs yet, but maybe the Pirates can make some headway against him this afternoon. They did figure out Maholm last night, after all. 

First pitch today is at 1:35.

Figuring James McDonald out is not easy. McDonald was so bad on Monday that it seemed like either a trip to the disabled list or removal from the rotation was unavoidable. On Monday, his fastball averaged a little over 90 mph and he never hit 92. His curveball seemed flat, and he got one swinging strike all night. Tonight, he was an entirely different pitcher. He still battled some command issues, but his four walks were more than offset by nine strikeouts. His fastball was much better, averaging about 91.5 mph and topping out at 94. His curveball was ridiculous and when the Braves weren't flailing after it, they were frozen in place by it. He even worked in nine sliders, by PitchFX's count, and I think some of his early strikeouts were on the slider. He looked like James McDonald -- a little wild, but with good enough stuff to overwhelm that problem. 

It's worth noting that he got some help from his fielders tonight, particularly in the fifth inning. To open the inning, BJ Upton lashed what looked like a home run to left field, but Starling Marte made what had've been the most non-chalant homer-robbing catch in baseball history. He tracked it to the wall, stood in front of the short wall in left, put his glove up, and pulled the ball in like it was a routine flyout 30 feet in front of the fence. After McDonald walked Jason Heyward, Justin Upton sent a ball to right field that looked like it was going over Jose Tabata's head, but Tabata made a nice, leaping grab of the ball at the warning track.

Of course, McDonald's stellar effort would've been wasted if the Pirates didn't become the first team to solve the Paul Maholm problem in 2013. After being shut out by Maholm for five innings, Starling Marte drew a leadoff walk (and it shouldn't be understated how nice it was to see Marte get on base twice and only strikeout once after his nightmarish game on Thursday) and scored on Andrew McCutchen's double. That was immediately followed by Gaby Sanchez re-capturing some of his Grapefruit League magic with a two-run homer to dead center that gave Tony Watson and Mark Melancon and Jason Grilli all the runs they'd need to close this one out. 

The Pirates have dealt the Braves as many losses in the last two nights as they had in the entire season prior. They've ensured a split against the Braves and a winning reecord in this difficult homestand against the Reds, Cardinals, and Braves. It's hard to overstate just how fun the Pirates have been to watch for the last two weeks. 

When the Pirates play games like they did last night, with Wandy Rodriguez cruising on the mound and the defense clicking behind him and all sorts of guys coming up with big hit after big hit, it's actually sort of easy to watch them and think, "Seriously, this team could contend for a playoff spot." It's obviously early to talk about things like that when the team in question is the Pirates, but it's one of those thoughts that's crept into my mind more than once in this homestand. 

I suspect that tonight will be much different. James McDonald is getting another start for the Pirates and that frankly seems all kinds of unacceptable after his last start agains the Cardinals. There's not really any reason to think that he'll do any better against the Braves tonight. His mound opponent tonight will be ex-Pirate Paul Maholm, who's career has taken off since joining the Braves at the trade deadline last year. In 14 starts with the Braves this year and last, Maholm has a 2.73 ERA and a 3.3 K/BB ratio, which is better than any individual season he had with the Pirates. He's started throwing what PitchFX classifies as a cutter and he also mixes in a ridiculously slow curveball that Jeff Karstens would be jealous of. In three starts this year, he's struck out 20 in 20 1/3 innings, walked just five, scattered 11 hits, and allowed zero runs. It used to be that Maholm would put up one or two excellent starts a year where he'd miss a ton of bats and look tantalizingly good, then the next time out on the mound he'd look like Regular Old Paul Maholm. Increasingly in the last half-season, Tantalizingly Good Paul Maholm is replacing Regular Old Paul Maholm. 

To counter Maholm, the Pirates are giving Pedro Alvarez the night off and starting Russell Martin at third base. Alvarez has hit two homers that have totaled 850 feet against the Braves in this series, but I have no problem giving him a night off against a lefty like Maholm. Martin has been scorching hot this week with six hits (including two doubles and a homer) in the last four games. Travis Snider will also sit in favor of Jose Tabata. I know that Tabata had a double last night and I know that the plan all year has been to platoon Snider and Tabata, but geez, Snider has pretty clearly been the Pirates' best hitter since getting his first start of the season against Arizona and he's only gone hitless in one game that he's started. Taking him out of the lineup right now doesn't feel like a great idea. 

Anyway, the first pitch of the night is at 7:05. If James McDonald's still pitching at 8 o'clock, I'll be pretty surprised. 

For almost the entire night, the Pirates had to play catch up in this game against the Braves. For most of the game, they did just that. BJ Upton lead the game off with a home run, the Pirates tied it on a sac fly. After the Pirates took a 2-1 lead on a long Russell Martin home run, the Braves took a 3-2 lead on a Chris Johnson homer. The Pirates tied the game back up on a moster Pedro Alvarez home run that hit most of the way up the batter's eye in center, only to fall behind again immediately when Justin Upton hit the rotunda with a solo homer of his own. The Pirates tied the game again on a Garrett Jones double, but then gave the Braves their final lead of the game when Evan Gattis hit the Braves' fourth home run of the night. 

A few salient points: it is difficult to win baseball games when you walk eight hitters and give up four home runs. Frankly, when you walk eight hitters and give up four homers, only allowing six runs is probably the best possible result. This springboards to the next point, which is that Jeff Locke was really bad tonight. In 4 2/3 innings, he walked four and gave up six hits. Half of those hits left the ballpark. Charlie Morton made a rehab start tonight and Francisco Liriano's second rehab start will be soon. These guys need to hurry up. The final point is this: Jared Hughes isn't fooling anyone this year. Obviously Mark Melancon and Jason Grilli can't pitch 162 innings this year apiece, which means that the Pirates need other relievers to pitch high leverage innings. They have plenty of arms that can be given chances in this role: Bryan Morris, Vic Black, and Duke Welker all come immediately to mind. Heck, even Vin Mazzaro hit 95 on the gun in his inning of relief tonight. The point is the same one that I made when Morris was demoted in favor of keeping Jeanmar Gomez on the roster: last year, the Pirates went through this terrible self-defeating cycle where after the Brad Lincoln trade they refused to use young pitchers like Justin Wilson or Bryan Morris in Pittsburgh because they were young pitchers who had never been used in big league situations. Instead, they leaned on the likes of Chad Qualls and things went terribly. 

I understand that the bullpen situation is going to be fluid for as long as the rotation is in shambles; when Jeff Locke, Jonathan Sanchez, and Bad James McDonald are in your rotation, you need Jeanmar Gomez and Vin Mazzaro and anyone capable of throwing three innings out of necessity. But the Pirates really shouldn't be afraid of giving guys like Morris (in particular) and Black and Welker (after they get some more Triple-A innings under their belts) a chance to pitch in some high leverage MLB situations, particularly if Jared Hughes keeps struggling. No one wants to see Chad Qualls or Hisanori Takahashi again, and there's no reason the Pirates should need guys like that this year. 

Finally: Pedro Alvarez has taken some good swings this week, so it was awesome to see him finally connect. I'm a little more concerned about Russell Martin given his age and the way his batting average has declined lately, but since Mike McKenry's huge game on Sunday Martin has four hits and two extra base hits in three games. In his first ten, he only had one single and one double. Hopefully he's starting to come out of his slump, too. Starling Marte did some course correction in the opposite direction tonight, striking out five times. Strikeouts are going to be a problem for him at times this year and the Braves' pitching staff is excellent, so I won't be surprised if he has a tough weekend. This is going to happen to him from time to time. What's more important will be how he adjusts after a rough night like this and how long it takes. 

I know that this is only one game of a four-game set, but given the remaining pitching matchups, the Pirates are in severe danger of being swept in this series by virtue of not beating Teheran. Let's see how they respond.

The Pirates' long homestand concludes with a four-game set against the Braves, who are almost certainly the best team in the early part of the 2013 season. The Braves are currently 12-2 and they've outscored opponents 68-27 (that is, the most runs scored and the fewest allowed) on the season. They're just steamrolling teams pretty much every night.

Of course, the Pirates are playing pretty good baseball themselves recently. They're 6-2 since the series in Los Angeles ended and the offense has really come to life. Honestly, I'm pretty excited to watch this series, if only to use as a measuring stick for the Pirates. The Bucs need one win in the next four games to guarantee a winning homestand against the Reds, Cardinals, and Braves. More than that would be a really good result against a really good Braves team. 

Tonight, Jeff Locke takes the mound against Julio Teheran. Locke hasn't been very good in either of his two starts, but he's at least kept the Pirates in both games that he's pitched. Teheran has definitely been the Braves' worst starter thus far. In his two starts, he's allowed nine of the 28 total runs the Braves have allowed as a team this season. In other words: the Pirates break out the bats tonight and see if they can't start the series off with a win because Hudson, Maholm, and Medlen are waiting in the wings. 

First pitch tonight is at 7:05.