Gene Collier: Defense at it Again

Thursday, June 09, 2005
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Barely 24 hours after turning a jaw-dropping Cirque du Soleil double play to lock down their biggest come-from-behind victory in more than a year, Pirates infielders were at it again last night against the bemused Baltimore Orioles.

In the first five innings after Kip Wells set up the protection racket for a 3-0 lead erected by the Pirates' first four batters against Bruce Chen, Lloyd McClendon's sometimes spastic but rarely dull defenders had already performed the full spectrum of double-play attempts: the double play not turned but much admired, the double play turned at a most opportune moment, and the double play turned even though it resulted in the third and fourth outs of the inning.
Who said you can't give a good team like the O's four outs?

That happened in the fifth, when Melvin Mora walked with two outs and Miguel Tejada chopped the next pitch to Rob Mackowiak at third. Mackowiak fed Jose Castillo at the bag to end the inning, but Castillo pivoted smartly and threw on to Daryle Ward, who gladly accepted Castillo's perfect throw as if a fourth out could be carried over to the sixth.

I guess when you're playing the kind of second base Castillo is right now, you don't want to come off the trapeze just yet. Four innings earlier, he'd taken an identical throw from Mackowiak with Chris Gomez bearing down on him, whirled and would have completed another exquisite DP had his throw not sailed to the outer fibers of Ward's mitt, from where it fell to the dirt.

"I like my guys up the middle," McClendon said about Castillo and Jack Wilson a few minutes after the Pirates delivered Baltimore's first series loss on the road. "I like them a lot. I can't imagine trading them for anybody. I don't see everybody on a consistent basis, but I can't imagine there's anyone better at turning the double play. When they get their gloves on the ball, good things seem to happen."

The very necessary DP came in the fourth, right after B.J. Surhoff started the inning with a single to center. Gomez rolled Wells' 2-1 pitch awkwardly past Wilson's side of the second-base bag. Jack accepted it as Castillo closed in, but tramped on the base himself and threw Gomez out. Jay Gibbons followed that with a single over Wilson's head, a single that would have ended Wells' shutout and perhaps ignited something that would have burned for some time given Baltimore's flammable offense and the North Side humidity.

Equally as intriguing from the defensive playbook, an eighth-inning sequence demanding a precise coordination rarely attempted outside of a tent. Reliever Mike Gonzalez had been summoned right after McClendon saw something in Wells' performance he didn't like -- namely a liner off Tejada's bat that landed in the left-field seats. Rafael Palmeiro followed with a pop-up in the center of the diamond. Gonzalez walked toward catcher Humberto Cota and would eventually indicate to Cota that he didn't see the thing anywhere. By this time though, Mackowiak, who did see it plainly, also saw plainly that it might land right on top of Gonzalez' head. Mack got there in time to catch it, brush past the pitcher, and get chopped down from the other direction by the charging Ward, who fell beside him. Castillo arrived from second in time to help the fellas to their feet, and Wilson just stayed at short, looking on in admiration. Surhoff then rolled a bunt to the right of the mound, but Gonzalez charged down the hill and flipped it to Ward in the same motion with which he executed some kind of Gonzo The Flying Squirrel-type move that brought McClendon from the dugout to see if Gonzalez had injured himself on this second attempt.

"He hurt himself, his knee; I'm a little concerned about it," McClendon said.

But for a team that has cracked at least one extra-base hit all 58 games (no other team has done that), a team that has been leading the National League in slugging for more than a month, this pitching and defense thing seems to be the style with which they're more comfortable.

"I've said all along that we're not going to outslug anybody," the manager said in defiance of the league's curious bookkeeping. "We're going to have to pitch well, keep the ball down, and play solid defense. On this homestand, we've done those things well."

The significance of last night for Wells shouldn't be understated. Not only did he leave the mound to torrents of applause for the second time in a week, but his fifth win matched his win total for all of last season, when his less-than-one-a-month victory pace was a major drain on the club's progress. Even though his first 12 starts this year where a cross-section of indifference -- four wins, four losses, four no-decisions, all of the 28-year-old right-handers numbers are trending favorably. He has allowed only one in his past two starts, and his earned run average, floating at 8.03 April 12, cruising at 4.53 as recently as May 9, has now executed a steady descent to 3.39.

Just to sustain this little enigma regarding the club's comfort zone, the offense erupted for three more runs in the ninth, two of them on the third hit of the game by Mackowiak, who's cranking at only .419 since May 3. But the game ended as comfortably as the Oriole ninth: Castillo to Wilson to Ward.

(Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.)