Good morning from PNC Park where the Pirates (8-10) look to bounce back from last night’s tough loss to the Brewers (13-5) in the final game of the four game weekend series. Gerrit Cole (2-1, 4.74 ERA) looks to play stopper as he faces Marco Estrada (1-1, 3.06 ERA).
Braun Acknowledges the Crowd
Ryan Braun commented on last night’s crowd during his at bats.
“I embrace the challenge of an atmosphere in an environment like this,” said Braun. “As a competitor, I think it makes it enjoyable. It makes it challenging, one way or the other they’re going to be really happy or I’m going to enjoy it.”
Hurdle’s Quotes
On Wandy’s performance last night — “We saw some good signs. Three pitches or less, twelve guys went down. We didn’t handle the ball well enough for him in the third inning, but there were probably more pitches up today than in the previous outing, so that was a challenge for him.”
On Wandy’s lessened Velocity — “I don’t know, it’s uncharted territory for me as it is for him. He didn’t have the surgery [last year]. Sometimes you have the surgery you get mph, Time will tell. Right now it is sitting on where it’s sitting, I think it’s 88-90 tops. What can be challenging is when you are used to having a 92-93 mph fastball how that sets up your breaking ball and your change up. It reduces the separation of velocity within the fastball and the change. If your change up is 82-84 and your fastball is 88-90, you not even getting 10 mph separation which is normally what your looking for in between the fastball and the change up. That’s what we’re looking at, how we can combat that, enhance it, change it if we need to. Again sometimes you just need to keep working. Go with what you got and do the best you can.”
On the offense bouncing back from Fridays lack of production — “When you can drop five on somebody and get a big inning. A big swing from Barmes, a big swing from Snider. We scratched a couple more runs, we actually scored twice with two outs and nobody on which is a good sign. We’re playing pretty much without a safety net, so it’s another one run game and those are decided by execution. We just have to keep playing and keep battling. The execution last night wasn’t where we needed it to be to win, but everybody threw what they had out there and sometimes that’s not enough.”
Other Notes
— Gerrit Cole has won each of his last three starts at PNC Park and four of his last five. He has gone 4-1 with a 2.43 ERA (33 1/3 IN/9 ER) in his last five home starts, surrendering just two home runs in that time. Cole defeated Shelby Miller and the Cardinals in his only start at PNC Park this season on 4/4 (7 IN/2 ER).
—In the last three games, Pittsburgh pinch hitters have combined to go 4-for-7 with a home run and five RBI. Overall this season the Bucs have gone 10-for-33 (.303) with two homers and a league-leading 10 RBI off the bench. Since the start of last season, the Pirates rank second among all teams with nine pinch-hit home runs, trailing only San Diego (11).
Today’s Pirates Lineup
First pitch is set for 1:35.
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
