I don’t have much to say about last night’s game: I wasn’t kidding when I said I wasn’t going to watch before the game started. I did follow along with the Gameday as I took care of other stuff last night, though, and it was easy to see that Charlie Morton had one of his better outings of the year, striking out five, walking just one, and getting 12 groundballs to just two flyballs in 7 2/3 against the Astros. I’ll write more about this for tomorrow, I think, but it’s interesting to watch how Morton adapts his approach from team to team. Last night, he used almost all sinkers again (more like his first two starts of the year than the past few) and since he was getting strikeouts, he just kept pushing ahead.
Andrew McCutchen’s bat finally came alive a little bit with two hits, including a big two-run double. Everyone’s made quite a bit of his struggles this year, but he’s OPS+ and wRC+ are both above average (103 and 104, respectively) because he’s getting on base at a good clip and showing some power with 5 doubles and 5 homers despite his low batting average. Basically, if he tears off two or three hot weeks here in May, he’s going to end the month with one of the best offensive lines for any centerfielder in baseball.
Finally, it’s only fair to note that Brandon Wood’s looked pretty good as a Pirate so far in what is admittedly a pretty small sample size. His big two-run double that put last night’s game away came on a good 0-2 swing and thus far, he’s done a much better job of working counts and putting the ball in play than I expected. It’s obviously early for him, but thus far he’s definitely been worth the roster spot and definitely a better utility option than Josh Rodriguez. I’m not ready to say more than that after nine games and 28 PAs, but even that’s not something I was sold on when the Bucs picked him up a couple weeks ago. I’ll happily admit that I’ve been wrong so far and hope that he continues to prove me wrong.
