Gameday 123: Pirates Turn To The Bullpen With Series On The Line
Mitch Keller continued working towards getting back to his top form, helping lead the Pirates to tie their weekend series up against the Minnesota Twins.
The All-Star struck out 12 batters in six innings, walking just one and allowing two runs. Andrew McCutchen hit his 11th home run and Ji-Hwan Bae has extra-base hit in both games since returning to the lineup.
Sunday’s game has a scheduled first pitch at 2:10 pm ET. Ryan Borucki is scheduled to start for the Pirates, in what appears to be a bullpen game.
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Both Termarr Johnson and Lonnie White Jr. returned to the lineup and came up with big hits. The FCL Pirates’ late season slide continued with another loss on Saturday.
Yesterday I looked at Aaron Shortridge, who has quietly been turning it on towards the end of the season.
Pitching Matchup
PIT - Ryan Borucki (1-0, 4.07 ERA)
MIN - Dallas Keuchel (0-1, 9.45 ERA)
Another Pirate game, another perfect game watch.
In case you're unsure about how the Pirates view their fans --
I couldn't get in to the Bradenton game today with my camera. I've gone to many hundreds of MiL games all over the eastern US, including various other FSL parks and probably a couple hundred games at LECOM, always with the camera, and never had a problem. Only the Pirates.
This isn't an isolated thing, either. I've been to FCL and MiL exhibition games at a number of teams' facilities. The Pirates are noticeably less welcoming to fans than any other team. I could give a number of examples, but here's one: The Pirates have set things up now so two of the four Pirate City fields aren't reachable for fans. Used to be you could watch games on all four. For MiL exhibitions, there are always two games and at least one is always on one of the two northern fields that are now off-limits. Sometimes both games are there. There was an incident last year when some Orioles parents came to watch their kids, but the kids were on the inaccessible field. The parents called the O's, who called the Pirates. They let the parents through, but that angered the Pirate fans who were there and couldn't watch that game.
The Pirates regard their fans as a nuisance and treat them accordingly.