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| the ballpark in Pittsburgh is every bit as lovely as they say |
Seven pitchers sounds like a lot, even for "a bullpen day," doesn't it? And yet, an unmitigated success by any reasonable standard: two scoreless innings from the opener Trevor Richards were followed by just one run over two-and-a-third from Yusei Kikuchi (whom we love and support), which took us into the fifth inning. One run, into the fifth? You'd happily take that from pretty much any of your starters, wouldn't you? Yimi came in and, unsurprisingly, was utterly nails throughout not just the remainder of the fifth but all of the sixth as well, which meant Cimber for the seventh, first Bass (who struggled slightly) and then Mayza (to help him) for the eighth, and a clean ninth (two strikeouts!) for Jordon Romano. All the while, Bo Bichette continues to find his swing: two more hits, and actually two for George Springer, who had low-key (in that it had largely escaped my notice) been slumping hard (something like oh-for-nineteen). But really, it was Bo's deeply impressive ten-pitch at-bat in the seventh, his bases-clearing double, that was the singular moment from this game (Chapman working a walk from a 1-2 count to load the bases: also clutch). When Bo can see the slider low and away, and lay off it, or flick it into the seats, he goes from being a good hitter to being a great hitter, and I am not saying that to be like "it is so obvious and also easy to take those and he should just take those because it is so obvious and also easy!" because that is not how I feel about it at all; I just mean that, when you see Bo take a couple of those sliders early in the count, then look the heck out, everybody. Look. The heck. Out (everybody).
KS
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