Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Pirates @ Padres : 5.2.11 - 5.4.11

Series: Pirates @ Padres, Petco Park, San Diego, CA

TV, radio: Root Sports, WPGB-FM (104.7).

Facts/Reaction: What a good way to start a road trip.  Taking 2 out of 3 from the NL West leading Rockies should really be something the Pirates can build on.  These same Rockies that came into PNC Park a few short weeks ago and embarrassed the Pirates on opening day with a pitcher no one has ever heard of.  The Pirates are now 8-7 on the road and have almost half of their total road wins from last year.  The team is doing the exact opposite thing that they did last year in that winning at home was something they did with regularity and now it seems winning at home has become a bit of an enigma and winning on the road is well...much easier.

Pitching Probables:

Monday, May 2 - James McDonald (1-2, 7.66 ERA) vs. Aaron Harang (4-1, 3.90 ERA)
Tuesday, May 3 - Jeff Karstens (2-1, 3.57 ERA) vs. Mat Latos (0-4, 4.98 ERA)
Wednesday, May 4 - Kevin Correia (4-2, 2.90 ERA) vs. Clayton Richard (1-2, 3.82 ERA)





Stats and Matchup: The Pirates now move onto San Diego to take on the NL West bottom feeders in the Padres.  The Padres are 11-18 this year and are struggling to produce on offense in anyway.  They are currently, 29th in runs, 30th in batting average, 29th in on base percentage and 30th in slugging percentage.  Needless to say, they have the worst offense in baseball.  Hopefully the Pirates can find a way to get to their good group of pitchers early in games en route to potentially taking 2 of 3 in the series and returning home with a 4-2 road trip.

Prediction:  If the Pirates can take game 1 from the Padres against Aaron Harang who is 4-1 with a 3.90 ERA than the I think that they can at least win 2 of 3 and maybe even get their first series sweep of the season.  By the way since this blog update is late, the Pirates did get to Harang early and beat the Padres 4-3 on Monday night.  Now winning 2 of 3 isn't such a lofty goal and with any luck the Buccos first sweep of the season could be complete by late Thursday night.

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