Pittsburgh Pirates outclass Houston Astros 5-3 in series opener – MLB Update
Pittsburgh Pirates continued to impress the critics as they outclassed the Houston Astros 5-3 at Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas on Thursday, July 26 in the opening game of their four match series of the 2012 Major League Baseball regular season.
Pirates’ pitching attack was absolutely brilliant as it created all sorts of problems for the Astros’ offensive line-up. Showing great composure and character, Pirates’ starting pitcher A.J. Burnett pitched 7.1 effective inning to grab his 12th win
of the season.
Allowing just two runs and four hits with five strike-outs, Burnett showed great control over his fastball and curveballs.
Burnett is having an excellent time on the mound this season. His ERA of 3.52 this year is considerably lower than his career ERA.
It will be interesting to see if he can maintain his excellent form over the next couple of months to lead the Pirates to their first National League Central Division title. Relief pitcher Joel Hanrahan also pitched with great control and accuracy for his
30th save of the season.
Centre-fielder Starling Marte provided the Pirates with an excellent start as he homered to left on his debut.
"I told some players in the dugout before the game that if he threw a fastball down the middle I was going to take a hack at it and that's exactly what I did," Marte said.
"That was a swing that touched a lot of people," Hurdle said. "Starling has been a special player all the way up. He's been a lot of places and a lot of people have had the opportunity to watch him. We've got an entire minor league system and an academy
in the Dominican Republic pulling for him. So (it was) really cool, really cool."
Garrett Jones also joined the party with a two run home-run to right in the first innings and shortstop Clint Barmes homered to left in the second to give Pittsburgh an impassable 5-0 lead. Credit should be given to Houston for fighting back strongly in
closing stages of the game but the Pirates held them off to take a 1-0 lead in the series.
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