The Pirates end their first roadtrip of the season, 6 west coast games, with an afternoon contest against the Giants. This one will bump right up against the Penguins first playiff game, and both are being covered by FSN, so if it goes extra’s, chances are we won’t get to see the end of this one unfortunately. If they can pull out a win today with Charlie Morton on the bump, the roadtrip will be a 3-3 success in my book. Morton came out dealing early in his first start, the first game of this roadtip in Arizona, but then had a disastrous third inning and exited after just 3.1 IP and having allowed 8 runs. He will obviously need to improve on that to get the Bucs back over .500. He has the stuff to do it, after all he did strike out 6 in that all to short first outing, but he got in trouble by getting behind in counts and nibbling, so clearly his success or failure is going to be dictated by how aggressive he is on the mound.
To this point in the season, the team is 4-4, but I find it at least a little bit concerning that all 4 losses have all been by 6 runs or more. That’s something to keep an eye on as the season progresses. This team isn’t built to win high scoring games, so if they can’t hold opponents to 3 or 4 runs, they aren’t going to win very often.
Aki Iwamura is quickly becoming one of my favorite Pirates. He almost always sees 5 or more pitches per turn, and has showing surprising power with 2 home runs. He’s probably not going to slug .530 for the season, but his at-bats are can’t miss television at this point if your a Pirates fan.
Andrew McCutchen said in the Spring that he wanted to be more aggressive on the basepaths this season, and so far he’s done just that. His 5 swipes, 0 caught, represent the NL lead in that category (Scott Podsednik has 6 in the AL). While his performance at the plate hasn’t been great so far, he’s made up for that on the basepaths, and suddenly 60 bags seems very much within reason for the young center fielder.

