When I entered the press box at PNC Park on Wednesday afternoon and picked up the starting lineup for the MLB NL Wildcard game I was pleasantly surprised but slightly concerned.
Pirates manager Clint Hurdle chose to emphasize defense over offense especially in light of the 21 errors that Pirates starting 1st baseman Pedro Alvarez committed during the 2015 regular season. I agreed with Pirates manager Clint Hurdle starting infielder/outfielder Sean Rodriguez for defensive reasons.
Could that decision by Clint Hurdle have been interpreted by the Cubs as saying: “we expect you to hit the ball, so we have to be ready for it?”
However Cubs manager Joe Maddon chose to go with an offense based lineup and that decision won the game for him because his 1 and 2 hitters provided all 4 runs that the Cubs scored.
Could that decision by Maddon been interpreted as him sending the message: “I am going to go with offense we don’t need a great defense because I don’t expect you hit our guy.”
Pirates starting pitcher Gerrit Cole appeared jittery and nervous in the 1st inning as he struggled with control, while his counterpart Jake Arrieta appeared poised, confident, even cocky facing the Pirates anemic offense and the rabid crowd at PNC Park.
I was looking at a few of the “scribes” from the Chicago when Jung Ho Kang was introduced to the PNC faithful during the pregame intros from his wheelchair. I am thoroughly convinced that the play that everyone, including Kang, is saying the correct things I believe there was some malicious intent by the overzealous takeout slide from the Cubs’ Chris Coghlan on September 17, making sure that Kang was one less obstacle that the Cubs would have to face during the one game “gunslingers” contest.
The Pirates as a team seemed uptight and tense, even during batting practice. When Cubs manager Joe Maddon was asked at his pregame news conference about his feeling on batting practice, he said that; “it’s optional. If the guys just want to get loose in the cage and play, they’re welcome to do that. On a day like today, the guys that aren’t playing, they want to hit for sure. For those that haven’t been around, I think batting practice is the most overrated part of what we do on a daily basis on a Major League level.”
The Pirates had a great pre game batting practice. Too bad that they didn’t have an opportunity to have a dress rehearsal with Jake Arrieta on the mound. The “prevent defense” NFL-like lineup experiment of Pirates manager Clint Hurdle lasted less than 3 innings because when the Cubs left fielder/catcher Kyle Shwarber hit a 2 run 450 foot monster home run into the Allegheny River, Hurdle was forced to prematurely insert his defensive nemesis Pedro Alvarez into the lineup.
In the 2014 Wildcard game the Pirates were defeated by the score of 8-0. In the 2015 Wildcard game the Pirates were defeated by the score of 4-0. That amounts to 18 innings of the Pirates not being able to score 1, not 2 or 3 but 1 miniscule run.
If home field advantage was the result of these two nasty defeats, I shudder to think how lopsided the losses would have been had the Pirates been forced to compete away from PNC Park.
Aubrey Bruce can be reached at: abruce@newpittsburghcourier.com or 412.583.6741 Follow him on Twitter@ultrascribe
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