PNC Park – The Pirates (64 – 42), fresh off of a sweep of yesterday’s double header, look to make it four in-a-row over the Cardinals (62 – 43) and extend their NL Central lead to 2 ½ games. Jeff Locke (9 – 3, 2.15 ERA) will take on Adam Wainwright (13 – 6, 2.51 ERA).
4pm today marked the non-waiver trade deadline for the MLB and the Pirates have appeared to remain in-tact as they did not make any moves before the deadline. Neil Huntington talked about not making a move:
“We looked exhaustedly big, medium and small to try to find a way to help this club. At the same time we believe in this club. We’ve had a great next man up kind of role working. We’ve got a lot of young guys come from our system to help us win games to help us be in the position that we’re in right now and we feel like we got some guys that, internally, are ready to turn a corner and we feel like we have some guys in our minor league system that can come up here and help us as we move forward.”
He added that they did take that chance to get a big name. “We were willing to do something stupid. We didn’t want to do something insane.”
Hurdle’s Quotes
On the Pirates past success against Wainwright – “It could be a combination of things. I don’t have anything I can put my finger on. If they’ve left balls over the plate we hit them, probably haven’t been on top of their game like all of the videotape we’ve seen. Wainwright’s got 14 victories. The numbers speak for themselves, I mean right handed batters he’s walked four times this year — nobody walks. You gotta swing the bat, you gotta compete so — we’ll see how it plays out.”
Other Notes
— Michael McKenry will be shut down for the season after having surgery on his left meniscus in his knee. He will be on rest for the next six weeks before starting rehab and working towards spring training next season. Tony Sanchez will now become the #2 catcher and stay with the team for the remainder.
— Jeff Locke (Tonight’s starter) has been charged with 3 earned runs or less in each of his last 17 starts and 18 of his last 20 overall. He ranks third in ERA (2.15), fifth in batting average against (.203) and is tied for fourth in winning percentage (.750).
First pitch is set for 7:05 and will be telecasted on ROOT in the Pittsburgh viewing area and ESPN everywhere else.
Follow Travis for Pirates news and in-game updates on Twitter @TBerardi_OVA or @TheYinzer
(Photo Credit: Isportsweb.com)
