Boneheaded Baseball

Some of the dumbest and worst baseball was the difference between a victory and the actual 4-3 loss for the Pittsburgh Pirates as they lost to the visiting Cardinals.
Evan Meek dropped to 1-1 with the hard luck loss.The Pirates send Jeff Karstens (0-1) to the hill tonight against Jaime Garcia (3-1) for the Cardinals.

Pirate Hooks

1) About the only redeeming issue in the game was the Pirates tying the game so that Zach Duke would not "earn" a loss after a performance that saw all three runs off of him score unearned.
Duke pitched very well and with an average defense would have gotten a victory.

2) Same goes for Evan Meek,who allowed one run in two innings that counted as an earned run,but anyone that watched the game could see that the run was not his fault either....

3) The Cardinals scored two runs in the first that was a directed result of a fumbled grounder by Ronny Cedeno off the bat of Matt Holliday that should have been the third out.
Cedeno continues to struggle in the field,not that Bobby Crosby would be any better.

4) St.Louis scored their third run in the sixth,when Andy LaRoche took a routine grounder from Yadier Molina and pulled Garrett Jones off the bag with a hurried throw.
My question is why hurry at all when Molina is one of the slowest runners the Redbirds have?

5) The final run was scored off Meek in the ninth when the team called a pitch out against Joe Mather,who was running on the pitch and was out by the proverbial country mile.
Akinori Iwamura took the peg from Ryan Doumit and put the glove near the ground thinking Mather would slide into it for the out.
However,the glove wasn't quite on the ground and Mather stuck his arm around the glove for the stolen base.
Mather would have been the third out,instead with new life-Yadier Molina doubled home Mather with the winning run.

6) I watched the game off the Cardinal feed to avoid Greg Brown and they were amazed that the Pirates were using a defensive shift against Ryan Ludwick and Albert Pujols as the commentators said they had never seen a team use the shift against them before and Ludwick shot his first hit through the created gap.
A routine grounder became a hit and that hit was eventually a run.....

7) Dumbest play of the night arguably cost Pittsburgh the game.
Bottom of the 8th,Bucs down a run and Andy LaRoche leads off with a single and Andrew McCutchen singles LaRoche to third.
Garrett Jones then grounds to Brendan Ryan on a routine grounder,but LaRoche breaks for the plate.
Ryan guns LaRoche down,who tries to buy time for McCutchen to reach third by getting into a rundown.
So far so good,but LaRoche doesn't give up the out after he sees that McCutchen has reached third and both players are on the base.
Since LaRoche had possession first,Molina tags McCutchen out and then LaRoche walks off the bag and Molina then tags him out.
Dumb baseball,I used to teach my players this rule in little league!
Points to McCutchen though,he seemed to know the rules as he tried to grab LaRoche and keep him from leaving the sack.
Pittsburgh would score one run and tie the game (getting Zach Duke off the hook from an undeserved loss),but if either of those players had scored,the Cards ninth inning run would have just forced extra innings.

8) Good to see the hard work on the basics and fundamentals is seeping through-just bad and brainless baseball...

Photo Credits-Gene Puskar-AP Photo