Offense Bails Out Anderson, bullpen can't hold forever

The Diamondbacks gave him a chance though. They jumped out to an early lead, putting up a crooked number in the top of the first inning, much like last night. Three straight singles for A. J. Pollock, Aaron Hill, and Paul Goldschmidt put two runners on, and one in before the first out was recorded. Wellington Castillo walked. Bases loaded, still no one out.  Yasmany Tomas grounded into an RBI double play with the next at bat, scoring Hill and sending Goldy to third. Peralta made the third out with a fly ball to right, but not before the Dbacks got an early two run lead.

It wouldn't last long. Chase Anderson just didn't have it tonight, and that was clear early on. He gave up two singles to lead off the first, and a throwing error on a pick off attempt let those runners go to second and third. Andrew McCutchen brought Gregory Polanco home from third on a sac fly, and Starling Marte went to third. Another sac fly, this time by Aramis Ramirez, brought home Marte and tied the game. Jung Ho Kang made the third out, but not before the Pirates tied the game at 2 a piece.

Both teams added single tallies to maintain the tie in the second inning. Nick Ahmed got a one out triple and Anderson brought him home with a bunt single. The Pirates got theirs thanks to an RBI double that brought home Pedro Alvarez. They also added a run in the third, thanks to a Starling Marte solo home run.

Everyone was quiet in the fourth, but the fifth is where everything got out of hand for Anderson. With two outs, he gave up a single to Ramirez, a single to Kang, and a walk to Neil Walker to load the bases. The final blow for him came in the next at bat, when Pedro Alvarez hit a 2-RBI single to give Pittsburgh a 6-3 lead. That was the end of the road for Anderson, and Chip Hale pulled him for Josh Collmenter, who gave up an RBI single to the first batter he faced to make it 7-3 Pirates.

Pittsburgh added another run in the seventh, but the Diamondbacks weren't going to take it lying down. They loaded the bases in the eighth inning, and a walk to Goldschmidt, a sac fly to Castillo, and a Tomas single let them put up a three spot of their own. That was all for that inning, but they weren't done in the ninth. The Pirates committed two pretty basic errors, the first allowing Ender Inciarte to reach and the second allowing Goldschmidt not to just get on base, but go to third, scoring both Inciarte and Aaron Hill to tie the game. David Hernandez came in for the bottom of the ninth, and thanks to a replay assisted double play, sent the game to extra innings.

They would battle on for six more innings, finally culminating in the bottom of the fifteenth inning. Keith Hessler was pitching his second inning, and got two strikeouts to start things off. However, a single to Francisco Cervelli was followed by a double off the bat of Pedro Florimon to bring the run home and end the game. 9-8 Pirates is your final in a buttload of innings.

<iframe src="http://www.fangraphs.com/graphframe.aspx?config=0&static=0&type=livewins&num=0&h=450&w=450&date=2015-08-18&team=Pirates&dh=0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="450" width = "450" style="border:1px solid black;"></iframe><br /><span style="font-size:9pt;">Source: <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/livewins.aspx?date=2015-08-18&team=Pirates&dh=0&season=2015">FanGraphs</a></span>

When you look at WPA, it becomes clear how we lost this game. Seven different players had a WPA lower than -19%, with one of them, Chase Anderson, being at -45%. Big kudos to Paul Goldschmidt though, who had a 67.3% WPA and tried to single handedly win the game, despite the epic levels of suck from some of his teammates. Not bad for a guy mired in the worst slump of his career.

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Comment of the night goes to noblevillian for his comment that I am blaming for jinxing us later on in the game...

I know Oscar cant hit the bright side of the barn, but it could be worse, we could have had florimon! lol
by noblevillain on Aug 18, 2015 | 8:45 PM ↩reply ⋆ rec ⚑ flag ⚙actions

In addition to that comment, there were an addition 855 in the GDT, largely due to the excess number of innings we played tonight. Leading the way with 202 comments all by himself was freeland1787, followed very distantly by GuruB and myself 69 and 65 respectively. Same teams and same time tomorrow, though I feel safe saying that there will be less innings played. See you then!