Pirates lose to Marlins and Brad Hand, 5-2

J.A. Happ pitched six scoreless innings, extending a streak of strong starts for the Pittsburgh Pirates in a 5-2 win over the Miami Marlins on Monday night.

From The Clipboard: The game lasted 3:21, and there were 17,644 in the seats at Marlins Park…The Bucs were 64-59 after 123 games last season…The Pirates have gone 22-8 against the N.L. East this season…Pedro Alvarez has hit 104 home runs since the start of the 2012 season. (Polanco, by the way, went 4-for-5 with two doubles.) They got another in the ninth as old friend Bryan Morris couldn’t find the strike zone and walked four batters.

“Tommy gutted it out, got through six and battled”, Jennings said. “We’ve got our best player down right now, so we’ve got to be 90 feet at a time”. He came into the game 7-20 as a starter, worst among all active pitchers, according to STATS, but has won three of his past four starts.

“The first half of the year, I was doing the same thing”, Happ said.

Gordon scored the Marlins’ first run and reached on a bunt single to begin their three-run sixth against Charlie Morton (8-5). Happ must contain Dee Gordon, who is 14-for-32 in his last eight games and leads the majors with a. 335 batting average.

Marlins manager Dan Jennings was equally confused. “He’s our sparkplug”. He smacked a sacrifice fly to center off the Marlins’ Brian Ellington that drove in Marte with the game-winning run.

Christian Yelich, sidelined since August 10 with a bruised right knee, is hoping to be back in the Marlins lineup Tuesday night, the first day he’s eligible to come off the disabled list.

Two Pirates were hit by pitches Monday, and Hand plunked Andrew McCutchen in the left foot on Tuesday. It happened again in the third inning when three consecutive two-out hits put him in a 2-0 deficit, both scoring on McCutchen’s opposite-field double into the corner in right. “When you’re able to pitch that way against that team, it says a lot about Brad and his growth”. J.T. Realmuto would ground out sharply to Pirates third baseman Jung Ho Kang and score Marcell Ozuna to cut the Pirates lead to 3-1. Yelich then doubled to bring the fifth run home.

Rodriguez would also score on a two-out hit by Gregory Polanco off Scott McGough, who relieved Cordier.

It should also be noted that this is the first time since Clint Hurdle joined Neal Huntington in Pittsburgh that the Pirates are 27 games over.500. The ball stays in the hitting zone for a shorter period of time and passes through at an angle that doesn’t match up with the path of a bat. “We didn’t have any results”. He went 1 for 4…. The Marlins signed Morse to a two-year, $16 million contract this past offseason, but he did not live up to the team’s expectations and was sent packing. 213 for them.

“It’s a hard position to judge intent”, Hurdle said. “We had a young pitcher, and he missed his spot up and in”.

The Pirates weren’t happy with the location of quite a few late inning pitches by the Marlins bullpen, which hit two batters and almost hit two others.