Pittsburgh Pirates annihilate St. Louis Cardinals 9-0 – MLB Update
Pittsburgh Pirates showed great composure and mental toughness to annihilate St. Louis Cardinals 9-0 at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, August 28 in the second game of their three match series of the 2012 Major League Baseball regular season.
Pirates’ starting pitcher James McDonald put up another masterful performance as he gave up just two hits in seven solid innings to grab his 12th win of the season. It will not be wrong to say that he played a big part in deciding the outcome
of the clash. Relief pitchers Chris Resop and Hisanori Takahashi combined to pitch two scoreless innings to help the Pirates shut-out the Cardinals.
Pedro Alvarez had an excellent outing as he drove in crucial runs to give his team complete control of the situation. Alvarez hit two home-runs. Chris Barmes and Garrett Jones added valuable runs to give Pirates an impassable lead.
"The second one, the ball looked like it was going to hit the (Clemente) Bridge," Hurdle said. "That's 400 and I don't know how many. That's a whole bunch of feet. It goes to show you he can shrink a ballpark."
"There was no way to slide around him," Second baseman Josh Harrison said. "I felt my only way was to go through him."
Cardinals earned a narrow 4-3 win in the series opener and they were hoping to take a decisive 2-0 lead on Tuesday but the Pirates played out of their skins to humiliate their opponents to level the series 1-1.
Manager Clint Hurdle will be very pleased with what he saw from his team in Game 2 and it will be interesting to see if the Pirates can take the momentum into the finale to take the series.
"It can spark a team," manager Clint Hurdle said. "But it will be up to us to play better baseball than we've played lately and play along the lines that we did tonight.”
Cardinals, on the other hand, will be extremely disappointed with their effort in a game that was crucial to them. Nonetheless, they are placed second in the National League Central Division, eight games behind the leaders Cincinnati Reds.
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