Five hour baseball

The Pittsburgh Pirates battled back from spotting the Colorado Rockies three runs in the first inning,forced extra innings and finally won the game on Jose Tabata's fourteenth inning RBI double for a 4-3 win at PNC Park.
Tabata had homered (1) earlier in the contest.
Garrett Olson picked up the extra inning win (1-1).
The game was moving slowly even considering extra innings,as I took the tape to work and was only able to watch seven innings in three hours and five minutes.
That is a pretty slow moving game to begin with.
Pirate hooks will be kept to what I saw in those seven innings.
The series continues tonight at PNC.

Pitching Matchup
Colorado:Greg Reynolds (Season Debut) at Pittsburgh:Charlie Morton (1-0 1.50 ERA) 7:05

Pirate Hooks

1) Sorry about the above picture not being representative of the game.
For a 14 inning games,just three pics available to use..

2) Two news catchups with the first being the Pirates lost righthanded pitcher Ramon Aguero on waivers to Texas.
Aguero struggled last season with Bradenton and Altoona and was reported to have lost velocity on the steamer...

3) The Pirates also gave up on the comeback of Craig Hansen and gave him his unconditional release.
Hansen was expected to develop into possibly a future closer after being brought to the Pirates in the Jason Bay deal.
Hansen developed a rare nerve disease that he was unable to return to top performance from.
Bryan Morris is the only player still in the organization from that trade....

4) I would say that one player likely caused time to be spent and bullpens to be used that may not have been needed to.
After Ross Ohlendorf walked the leadoff batter,Jonathan Herrera hit a medium speed to roller to Ronny Cedeno at short.
Cedeno didn't exactly hustle to field it and then took his time throwing to Lyle Overbay.
The next batter,Jason Giambi homered to right for all the runs Colorado would score on this evening.

5) Ross Ohlendorf left in the third inning with shoulder issues.
Ohlendorf was struggling with control anyway and Jeff Karstens filled in as the long man.
Karstens would be the most likely option to replace Ohlendorf's rotation spot,if that is deemed necessary.

6) Besides Jose Tabata, most  of the credit for this win has to go to the Bucco bullpen.
After Ohlendorf was through after just two and two thirds,the bullpen combines for eleven and a third innings of scoreless hurling from seven different pitchers.
Colorado was able to get just six hits from the seven Pirates.

7) The bullpen is short handed today with only Evan Meek not pitching last night.
Meek was reported to have stiffening in the shoulder.
Between the questions about Meek and the rest pitching last night,a solid outing for Charlie Morton tonight is a must!

Photo Credit-AP Photo