What a difference a year makes for Charlie Morton. He was an enigma last year. How could a guy with such good stuff be so bad? Well, he has turned it around this year. He tossed his second complete game of the season (and second against Cincinnati) and was credited with his second career shutout.
What little offense there was came in spurts. The Pirates and Reds each collected two hits in the first inning. Neither was able to score. The Reds would only get three more hits the rest of the game. Pittsburgh broke through in the fourth against Bronson Arroyo. Neil Walker walked with one out. Lyle Overbay singled and Pedro Alvarez homered (finally!) to make it 3-0 Buccos.
The Pirates secured some insurance in the seventh. Andrew McCutchen’s dinger scored Ronny Cedeno who had doubled. That made it 5-0 and that was all the scoring. I pity anyone who left their seats for either of those two at bats.
Morton gave up four singles, a double and two walks. He struck out five while dropping his ERA to 2.62. Arroyo was charged with all five runs in seven innings. He yielded seven hits and two walks.
The Good
Yep, Charlie Morton was electric.
Alvarez hit another homer!
Overbay and Cedeno each had two hits.
The losing streak is over.
The Bad
The offense only picked up eight hits.
The Rest
This was Morton’s second career shutout. He has five wins in 2011, equalling his career high. He is now 3-4 against Cincinnati with two of those wins coming this year.
Arroyo is now 6-6 against Pittsburgh.
Cedeno has two hits in three straight games.
Alvarez went 18 games to start 2011 without a homer and then went 16 games between dinger #1 and dinger #2. His longest homerless drought in 2010 was 24 games. His first homer in 2010 came in his 17th career game.
Bucs have twelve road wins in 2011 after picking up just 17 all of last year.
Cedeno is about 40 hits shy of taking over third place on the all-time hits list for players with the last name of Cedeno. He currently trails Cesar Cedeno, Roger Cedeno and Andujar Cedeno.
