With the first week of 2014 baseball in the books, the Pirates picked up with unfinished business from last year. In the opening series, the Pirates squared off against NL Central rivals Chicago Cubs.
In the first two games of the year, the Pirates had to settle it in extra innings. On Opening Day, Neil Walker launched a home run over the Clemente Wall to give the Pirates a walk off victory 1-0 over the Cubs.
On Wednesday, the Pirates had a night game, in which Charlie Morton pitched efficiently, giving up no runs as he gave the game to the bullpen. He was the most reliable asset to the Pirates last year, but in this game, the double headed snake of Melancon and Grilli ended up being the goat. The Pirates ended up surrendering a 2 run lead to the Cubs to force extra innings.
This extra inning game was more suspenseful as it saw the Pirates down 3-2 at one point, but with a walk-off hit by Tony Sanchez, the Pirates staved off the Cubs to win the series.
Although, the hiccup occured in game 3 of the series when the Pirates lost 3-2.
The next series was against another division rival, St. Louis Cardinals, whom the Pirates battled with and lost to in the best of 5 NLDS last year.
An hour delay halted game 1 of the series, but ended up being a shellacking by the hometown team as Alvarez hit two homeruns; a marvelous outing by Gerrit Cole supplied a blowout victory, 12-2.
Game 2 ended up being all Cardinals early and all Cardinals late as they pranced to a 6-1 win over the Pirates. Not much went right for the Pirates even with top of the rotation pitcher Francisco Liriano out on the mound.
Game 3 ended up being a tightly contested contest with the Pirates getting another clutch hit out of backup catcher Tony Sanchez. It also served as a motivational win as they beat the pitcher that beat them in Game 5 of the NLDS last year, Adam Wainwright.
In the first week of the season, the Pirates showed that they can win the tightly contested games that they played last year, and that their pitching is still well off. Despite Grilli blowing a save earlier this year, he redeemed himself with a clutch save against the Cardinals.
The Pirates also showed that they still love playing at home as they won both series in their homestand to start off the season. Both Travises are hitting well with Travis Snider and Travis Ishikawa both batting a representable above .300, but it is still early in the season.
Alvarez is still clobbering the Cardinals as he hit two homeruns against them in the first game and the Cards’ pitchers seemed to pitch around him in the next two games.
McCutchen has reached base safely in all the games so far this year, and Marte is hitting reasonably well as both have triples on the year so far.
Cole is the only starting pitcher on the staff that got a win so far this year despite best efforts by Liriano in the opener, Morton in game 2 against the Cubs, and Volquez Sunday against the Cards. Rodriguez and Liriano are the two starters to receive losses this year.
With six divisional games done, the Pirates will go on the road to play the Cubs starting Tuesday. The first month of the year, the Pirates will play entirely divisional opponents, which if they play well can set the tone for the entire season.