Monday, May 23, 2005

Thoughts on the loss

Damn, the Cardinals have some good players. You just cannot give RBI opportunities to Albert Pujols. You cannot give Larry Walker an inch on the bases. And Chris Carpenter was untouchable for most of the night.

That said, the Bucs don't look too shabby to me. This one wasn't a laugher. The Bucs need to make haste slowly, as the old saying goes, with the Cardinals. They are going to make mistakes and the Cardinals are going to make mistakes. It looked to me like the Pirates made a few extra mistakes after the first few. Maybe they were thinking they had to play mistake-free ball to beat the Cardinals. Going into the ninth, that two-run lead felt like twenty runs. It wasn't a laugher but it didn't look or feel close at the end. Still, the fact remains that it was close. It's good to see such focus on the need to play perfect ball, even when you see it, for example, in that terrified look Dave Williams flashed, at the end of his start, as he wheeled around on every batted ball to see where the hell it would land.

With a little luck - a baserunner or two in front of Jason Bay's home run, maybe - that kind of focus will be rewarded. For a moment I thought tonight's game had the feel of a playoff game. It didn't seem like they had a chance to win at the end, but they did, and it did seem like they belonged on the same field as the Cardinals. And that was not so much the case at the end of last year.

Anyway, it's been more than a couple weeks. The Pirates continue to look consistently better. There may be little chance of winning the NL Central but still they look consistently better, even losing. I hope they sleep well tonight.

No comments:

Post a Comment