I Spent Three Hours Watching This?

Hey, you could tell there were two last place teams playing tonight. The D-backs won running away, 7-0, but it was an ugly nine innings. Greenfield-Penn Hills Colt games at Magee Field are better played (and considerably cheaper to attend).

Ross Ohlendorf labored again, giving up three runs - one highly unearned, thanks to a Steve Pearce throw that missed home plate by fifteen feet - in six innings. That was due more to D-back ineptitude on the basepaths than anything the Big O did.

They hit into a first inning DP on a 3-0 pitch. A runner was picked off second base the following frame. They caught a guy trying to stretch a double into a triple in the third. In the fourth, another runner was cut down at home.

The Bucs helped make up for it, though, with Pearce's wayward toss and a couple of misplays in left by Brandon Moss, a a ricochet off the fence that Jack Wilson ran down and the other a single that went through him, allowing a pair to touch home.

Doug Davis threw like a Pony League pitcher, and the Bucs responding by hitting like Little League batters. He threw a curve in the high sixties, and a low 80s heater that topped out at 85. The result? Eight strikeouts in six innings.

The much-maligned D-Back pen shut out the Bucs over the last three innings, while Evan Meek gave up four runs in the eighth to ice it for Arizona. The Pirates stranded ten, and went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position. And that hit was an Ohlendorf single; Moss was thrown out trying to score.

Ah well, maybe a major league game will break out tomorrow afternoon.

-- John Perrotto of Pirates Report speculates that there may be one survivor in the Bucco housecleaning.

"John Grabow, the Pirates’ top left-handed reliever, has been linked to nearly every team in the major leagues in various trade rumors over the last two seasons. Yet, he still wearing a Pirates’ uniform and, despite being eligible for free agency at the end of the season, there are indications that neither Huntington nor manager John Russell want to part with him.

Grabow is again having another quietly productive season, going 3-0 with a 3.65 ERA in 43 games. There are signs the Pirates might at least consider offering him a contract extension to provide a veteran anchor to a very young bullpen that is improving by the day.

Despite being in the organization since he was the third-round draft pick in 1997 as a high school senior in southern California, Grabow is still just 30 and his salary demands wouldn’t figure to exorbitant."

Maybe they'll even get around to cleaning out those bone chips in his elbow.