Well Whoopity-Doo

The Pittsburgh Pirates officially got their first win a week earlier than last season, though it wasn't necessarily due to anything fantastic they did on their own.

Good news: The team won 4-2 in extra innings after being down 2-1 and down to their final out; Jose Bautista, Jack Wilson, and Nate McClouth combined to go 5-10; Zach Duke wasn't fantastic (8H, no K's), but still held Houston to two runs and only made a few mistakes (Scott's HR and a couple hard 2B's) - if he improves from here, I'll take it; we apparently still own Lidge; and the bullpen was perfect.

Bad news: Castillo was all glove, no hit; LaRoche struck out four times in five at-bats; Paulino was also ofer in five at-bats; the Pirates showed a troublesome lack of patience - Jack Wilson got Oswalt to throw 12 pitches in his first at-bat of the game, and Duffy drew a walk in his first. Outside of that, Oswalt threw 80 pitches in 7 1/3 innings, and the Pirates drew exactly one other walk - off Lidge. Not so good.

In spite of that, the Pirates faced one of the five best pitchers in the National League and managed to pitch and defend well enough to hang around and expose Houston's bullpen for what it is. A win is a win, but this looks an awful lot like the good pitch, great defend, no hit teams of the recent past.

We'll see what happens the next couple days against less stellar pitching in Jason Jennings and Woody Williams.


Elsewhere around the league:

• Curt Schilling got outpitched by the newly-rich Gil Meche, Mark Grudzielanek rediscovered his bat (if only for one day) and the Royals beat the Red Sox, 7-1.
• Ben Sheets may or may not be back. Sheets pitched a complete game, gave up a home run to Jeff Kent to lead off the second inning, and allowed only one other hit all game in a 7-1 Milwaukee win. Then again, he of the 10.5 K/9 only struck out three yesterday.
• Adam Dunn hit two home runs in his first two at-bats of 2007, Aaron Harang was good, and Carlos Zambrano most definitely was not. Reds 5, Cubs 1.
• As bad as Zambrano and Schilling were, Jose Contreras was even worse, giving up eight runs in an inning-plus of work, and Cleveland rgave the scoreboard an early workout in a 12-5 win.
• Washington played so poorly against Florida that their star of the game was...Dimitri Young?

It was a day full of mediocre pitching. Carl Pavano, Brandon Webb and Johan Santana's teams got wins in spite of their mediocrity, as did C.C. Sabathia.

Should be a fun year.

NL Central

Cincinnati 1-0

Pittsburgh 1-0

Chicago 0-1

Houston 0-1

St. Louis 0-1

Even if it's only for a day....