Giants @ Pirates 5/7/08

Going into this game I was concerned about Barry Zito dominating the Bucs and gaining the confidence necessary to fully regain his starting job. Yes, you read that correctly. See, the Pirates can’t hit awful pitching. They can leave perfectly capable pitchers like Brett Myers wondering what went wrong. They even held their own against Johan Santana. I wouldn’t be surprised if they lit up Brandon Webb for 8 runs but they can’t hit awful pitching.

A perfect example can be seen in the Nationals’ series. The starting pitchers the Pirates faced were Odalis Peres, John Lannan and Matt Chico. Not exactly Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz. If one were to ask most GM’s which of those three they would take the unanimous answer would be 23-year-old John Lannan. After all, he was entering the game 2-2 with a 2.64 era. Anyway, the Pirates drop 2 of three. Take a wild guess which one of these pitchers the Pirates roughed up for their only win. Now you see why Zito concerns me.

Luckily, the Pirates had Phil Dumatrait. A former 1st round draft pick, Dumatrait was once the focal point in the Red Sox deal for former flash in the pan Scott Williamson. He came to the Pirates after being placed on waivers by the Reds this off-season after getting his first cup of coffee in the bigs which ended up being extremely forgettable. While to this point he has been the best off-season acquisition (time will tell but I believe that Marino Salas will ultimately be the best player the Bucs picked up this off-season), one would hardly confuse him with the dominant pitcher that the Bosox believed they had drafted back in 2000. Fortunately, Dumatrait was facing the pathetic San Francisco Giants.

Dumatrait gave the Bucs nearly 6 inning of shutout ball while striking out five and only walking one. Xavier Nady provided the entire offense with a 2-run homer off of Zito in the 4th and a rare run producing GIDP in the 8th. In reality, those were the only stories of the game. I’m happy to get the win but the only thing to really take away from this game is that while our beloved Buccos may be bad, The San Francisco Giants are much, much worse. Brian Sabean had one decent year as a GM in 1997 when he traded Matt Williams for Jeff Kent and Julian Tavarez. Since then he had just been riding the Bonds express while doing just enough to keep his job thanks to the occasional brain dead GM offering one sided deals that he couldn’t refuse (Hello Littlefield’s Schmidt for Vogelsong and Rios masterpiece) and Bonds turning into a superhuman. I’m reaching out to San Francisco fans here. We know how you feel and maybe we can help each other. Keep the faith and perhaps someday the Bucs will be playing the Giants in the playoffs.