The Pittsburgh Pirates pitching staff caught the nations attention Monday night.

Their major-league leading fourth shutout came against the red hot hitting Florida Marlins, resulting in an 8-0 victory. Of coarse it would come on a cold, wet and rainy Pennsylvania night in front of 8,790 brave souls.

One of those souls, the biggest question mark on the Marlins starting rotation, Andrew Miller will plead the fifth in proving a lock in the rotation.

Miller exited an out before ending the fifth inning letting four runs
score off five hits and four walks. The control problems might have
been due to a strained right oblique muscle which will sideline Miller
for the next 15 days on the Disabled List. Miller was a DL victim last season with a knee injury. Might be a bad omen, but in 2008 Miller was replaced in the starting rotation by Josh Johnson and ended the season in the bullpen.

“I just didn’t have that second gear when I wanted to put somebody away,” Miller said. “It felt like I was throwing at 80-85 percent to prevent [the injury] from obstructing with my ability to throw the ball because I just couldn’t throw through it.”

Entering Monday’s game, the exclamation point was the high powered offense that thrusted the Marlins into a seven game winning streak and dash to ten games above 500.  Pirates starter Ross Ohlendorf quietly entered and cut that streak to a half, winning just his second career major league game. The hurler earned it through a career high seven innings pitched allowing just two hits and get this, NO Homers.

The long ball were the Marlins bread and butter in their winning steak, four straight games involved a homer and every game they rocked out at least nine hits. Not Monday night as Ohlendorf was able to do what Johan Santanta, Derek Lowe and the entire Nationals rotation couldn’t do: hold the Fish from extra base hits.

Impressive numbers considering the Ivy Leaguer was trade scrap to the Yankees for Randy Johnson and then to Pittsburg for Xavier Nady. 

Pirates relievers Tyler Yates and Jesse Chavez pitched a perfect eighth and ninth, respectively.

All the things the Pirates did right, the Marlins did wrong. Both needed their starting pitcher to go deep into the game, and get quality relief from the bullpen. That didn’t happen for manager Fredi Gonzalez.

Logan Kensing entered his fifth game of the season and would last 2 1/3 banged and damaged innings. Kensing let up six hits, four earned runs with two walks, none bigger than a Nate McLouth game-icing, 433-foot, three-run homer in
the sixth that splashed into the Artic Allegheny River.

With the game out of grasp, Dan Meyer came on and pitched an eriely quiet eighth inning.

Emilio Bonifacio and Hanley Ramirez contributed the only hits for the Marlins, both singles.

Punchline Summary:

The Bucs take game one on a cold and wet night at PNC Park from a pitcher with one major league victory. Tuesday night will feature the other pitcher acquired from that Nady trade: Jeff Karstens.

Karstens will be making his second start of 2009, lasting four innings against the Houston Astros in his first. Kastens last season went 2-6 with an earned run average of 4.03. The Marlins will counter with Anibal Sanchez, who has just 2 earned runs in as many starts.

Noteworthy Points:
The rain left the downtown Pittsburgh ballpark about 20 minutes too late and delayed the game’s start time.

Marlins are the USC of Major League Baseball: An early number one in the polls….

That’s according to ESPN’s latest Power Rankings which have the beloved Fish tops in baseball (too bad the season isn’t three weeks long). The teams seven game winning streak with sweeps in Atlanta and Washington, dethroned last week’s number one (Braves) all the way down to 15th.

Down…..But Not Out

Pittsburgh has been a streaky team in 2009, take their past weekend action for instance. They shut down the Braves with wins of 3-0 and 10-0 but slipped on Sunday to get blown out 11-1.

McPherson Goes West

Ok so it appears Marlins President of Ops Larry Beinfest made the right decision sticking with Bonifacio instead of minor league home run king Dallas McPherson. According to Henry Schulman, the San Fransico Giants have signed McPherson and will send him to extended Spring Training before potentially sharing time in the Fresno Grizzles (AAA) lineup

Quick! Grab Your Badenhop Jerseys Out of The Garage

(Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel Marlins Beat Writer Juan C. Rodriguez knows his stuff:

“To replace Miller, the Marlins have promoted right-hander Burke
Badenhop from Triple-A New Orleans. Badenhop was scheduled to pitch
tonight at Round Rock (Tex.). Instead, he’ll be available to pitch in
relief tonight before taking Miller’s next start Sunday at Dolphin
Stadium against the Phillies.”

So Bandenhop (involved in the December 5, 2007 Miguel Cabera-Dontrelle Willis trade) is pitching call-up number one on the season. Ryan Tucker who also has big league experience was placed on the DL last week.

Badenhop, a righty, was 2-3 last season with a forgetful 6.08 earned run average, making eight starts in the majors. His promotion will be a blessing to the tired bullpen arms.

No one on the corners has swagger like them.

Jeremy Hermida had barely cleaned the crust out of his eyes
when he lifted the Marlins to a second series win against the Washington
Nationals. With their backs against the ropes for a second straight day in
Nationals Park, the  Florida Marlins
leftfielder relived the glory from a Friday night late inning game winning
single with a pair of bombs to first tie the game, then give his team a lead.

The Marlins (and Nationals for that matter) could have
easily let up on themselves before the first inning came to a close.  On a day when a team’s bread and butter
(starting pitching) was far from solid, their sudden backbone (bullpen arms and
a tweaked batting order) came to the limelight.

Josh Johnson, who mastered his way through the Mets and Nationals
lineup in his two starts on the season, came across as solved puzzle Saturday
afternoon.  Johnson was tagged with an
Austin Kearns grand slam in the first but managed to minimize the damage
through six innings with the Marlins down 6-3.

Handing the ball over to the Marlins bullpen for a win on a
day like Saturday appeared to be a prayer entering the season.  But this so called Achilles’ heel has produced
21 1/3 straight innings without an earned run crossing the plate. You’d have to
pull up last Friday night’s game against the New York Mets to find an earned
run suffered by a Marlins reliever.

Dan Meyer, Kiko Calero (1-0), Logan Kensing, and Reynel
Pinto carried the load Saturday afternoon frustrating Nationals hitters
with a solo hit the last five innings of a game they started with hit after
hit.

Those hits transferred in waves over to the Marlins dugout.
After a Cody Ross double, catcher Ronny Paulino proved he could tag lefty pitchers
with “half a grand slam” shot in the second inning. The Marlins scraped
together a run before Nationals closer Joel Hanrahan again entered the ninth
trying to preserve the lead. But Hanrahan again fell victim to the long ball
and will be looking forward for the Marlins to leave town after Sunday’s game.

This time it was Hermida who would provide the devastating
ninth inning blast to tie the game up, a two run shot to even the score for the
first time since inning number one.  After an inning and a half of solid pitching,
Hermida reached the plate with two on and no outs and swung another pitch into
the Nationals Park bleachers.

Calero pitched a quiet 11^th to earn his first win
since 2007 with the Oakland A’s.

The Marlins improved to a big league-best 10-1. The
Nationals have the worst record at 1-9.

 

 

 

 

 

Facing their second loss on the season just two outs away, Cody Ross
took matters into his own hands…err his own bat off a ninth inning John Hannan fastball.
Ross belted the inside pitch into the Nations Park left field seats and
told Leo Nunez to strap up because the game was going at least nine
full.

After another night of Nunez doing his job, Jeremy Hermida’s infield
single scored Jorge Cantu in the 10th inning, capping a two-out rally
to give the Marlins a 3-2 win over the last place Washington Nationals.

Hermida’s at-bat was an afterthought for Nationals catcher Jesus Flores, who started for the dugout along with reliever
Saul Rivera after Dan Uggla took a 2-2 pitch
on the outside corner with two out and Cantu on.

Just
about all involved thought it they’d hear the “SSSSSStrrrrrikkkke!!!”
call from home plate umpire Tim
Timmons, except Tim Timmons. Uggla dumped the “new life” next pitch
into short right, setting up Hermida for the game-winning RBI on an
infield single to short
Friday at Nationals Park.

Closer Matt Lindstrom survived an Elijah Dukes lead-off double in
the bottom of the 10th to notch his second save and give the Marlins
their best start in franchise history.

Noteworthy: LHP Taylor Tankersley had successful
surgery Friday to repair a stress fracture in his throwing elbow.
Tankersley, on Class AAA New Orleans’ roster, will be evaluated in six
weeks before a throwing program is determined.

Nolasco was pretty angry after exiting the game before the fifth. Not quite sure at whom but take a look at what he said after the game to decide. “I’m pretty angry I wasn’t able to go deeper”

Lucky Can of Skoal earns Marlins MVP of the Week…it’s safe to say that Cody Ross broke out of his 2 for 25 slump to enter the season with two homers in as many games. But how exactly did he break out of it? Well according to Clark Spencer and Mike Phillips in their Herald blog it was because of the empty Skoal can given to Ross by none other than Hanley Ramirez. Hey when you guys are done with it…my church league games are Wednesday nights.