Buc Bats Missing In 5-1 Loss

Hey, looked good in the desert at the start. The Pirates took the early lead  for the third straight time when Cutch, Casey McGehee and Neil Walker connected on consecutive two-out knocks in the first. Rod Barajas followed with a walk to juice the bases, but a Josh Harrison fly ended the frame.

Pittsburgh wouldn't have more than one baserunner aboard in any following inning, and only once would a runner reach second base the rest of the way out.

The edge didn't last long.With one away, Aaron Hill hit his third long ball of the season on an 0-1 heater. It was the first homer Erik Bedard has surrender so far this season. The game settled down after that. Joe Saunders was putting Bucs away without a sweat while Bedard was dodging raindrops. He faced 13 hitters between the second and fourth innings, and 10 of them worked him for 3-ball counts. Bedard worked out of jams in the second and third innings.

He finally paid when he issued two-out walks to Paul Goldschmidt and Jason Kubel in the fourth, and Ryan Roberts gave the D-Backs the lead with an RBI single dropped softly into right. Bedard, who struggled mightily, still kept the game in hand, leaving after five innings and 97 pitches. He allowed two runs on three hits with 4 walks and 3 Ks.

In came Evan Meek in the sixth, and Arizona made its move quickly on him. Miguel Montero dumped his first offering into center, and Chris Young drilled the second pitch he saw, a slider, over the wall in left. Three pitches, two runs. Young has been one of the league's hottest hitters, and the blast gave him five homers on the year, one more than the Pirate team. He finished the night 3-for-4 with a .404 BA. His bomb opened the score to 4-1, and the Fat Lady was ready to take the stage.

Chris Resop came in to work the seventh, and pinch hitter Gerardo Parra banged the first pitch CR threw, a fastball, and it ended up splashing down in the Arizona pool beyond the right center wall to end the scoring for the night.As usual, the Fat Lady was right.

Bedard is 0-3, although he has yet to give up more than two runs and has a 2.65 ERA. Pittsburgh has scored twice behind him.

The Pirates are now 1-6 on their road trip and 3-7 on the season. Clint Hurdle has a rep as a solid hitting instructor, and he better put that to use. Nineteen runs in 10 games is pretty dismal. A team line featuring a .188 BA, .237 OPB and .263 slugging percentage is even more dismal. And with Ian Kennedy on the hill today, it's not getting any easier. Of course, everyone looks like Cy Young lately. Jeff Karstens will hook up with him at 9:40 PM.

• Last night was Bedard's 21st start against a NL club, and the 19th time he did not allow more than two earned runs. 
• Pirates are the only team without a 100-pitch outing from a starting pitcher yet this season.
• According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Pirates are the first MLB team since the 1988 Rangers to go through their first 10 games of a season without scoring or allowing more than five runs in any contest. The Pirates were the last NL team to accomplish the feat when they went a league record 16 games to begin the 1965 season.
• AJ Burnett went four frames and gave up five runs on seven hits with four walks in his rehab outing at Indy last night. The good news is that he did throw 81 pitches and hit 92 on the gun.