Thursday, July 01, 2010
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/?m=1
CHICAGO --These are the far too Friendly Confines where baseballs rocket onto Waveland Avenue. This is the venerable venue where there once was a final score of 26-23. . This is the home of prodigious home runs, flighty fly balls, bloated ERAs and dizzy pitchers.
Welcome to Wrigley Field, Brad Lincoln.
Here is your first major league victory.
A combined shutout, no less.
John Smierciak/Associated Press
Pirates starting pitcher Brad Lincoln throws in the second inning.
"It's a different ballyard when the wind blows in," Pirates manager John Russell said after the 2-0 victory provided the rookie right-hander with a Wednesday afternoon to remember.
Lincoln dragged an 0-2 record and 6.00 ERA into the game, but the famed park certainly was the land of Lincoln.
And the 25-year-old fourth-overall pick from 2006 knew which way the wind was blowing.
"It was something I put in my back pocket and used to my advantage," Lincoln said. "If you see something like that, then you attack your zone with all your pitches. That's what I did. I felt like it was going to be my day."
"He dominated," added Garrett Jones, whose eighth-inning double -- his first extra-base hit after 11 games without one -- drove in the winning run.
"He looked like it was more than his third or fourth start," said Joel Hanrahan, who followed him with a nine-pitch, two-strikeout eighth inning.
Octavio Dotel finished Lincoln's fifth start for his 16th save.
Lincoln allowed only one baserunner through the first three innings, plunking Derrek Lee hard with a 91 mph fastball. Mike Fontenot's leadoff single in the fourth was the first hit against him. He allowed two hits in the fifth, but, with Cubs on second and third and two out, pinch-batter Tyler Colvin struck out facing five curveballs in six pitches.
"Absolutely, it was very sharp today," Lincoln said of his curve. "I was able to throw it for strikes when I needed to and use it as a put-away pitch. That's going to be a big key for me."
His final line: Four hits, one walk, one hit by pitch and six strikeouts in seven innings at Wrigley. This by a rookie who yielded 29 hits and 16 earned runs and had eight strikeouts in his previous four starts.
The last two batters he faced, Alfonso Soriano and Koyie Hill, each saw 92-, 93-mph heat in striking out and grounding into an inning-ending double play.
"I was very pleased the last two innings," Russell said. "The velocity was there. As the game went on, he got stronger."
And when was the last time the soft-spoken manager was "very pleased?"
"That's what he's capable of doing," Russell added of Lincoln, a pitcher with a nasty curveball that works best when ahead in the count. "He's been building to this start. I knew it was coming sooner or later. He [previously] showed signs of being very efficient."
Lincoln threw eight pitches in the first inning, 11 in the third, six more after a six-pitch walk to open the sixth and 11 in the seventh, his last of the day.
In the top of the eighth, Andy LaRoche, starting at second base for a second consecutive day, reached first on an Aramis Ramirez error, took second on Andrew McCutchen's single and scored on Jones' double. Soon after the Cubs chose to walk the bases loaded, Lastings Milledge -- hitting .377 this season with runners in scoring position -- "laid off a pretty good cutter" and took a run-scoring walk to give Lincoln the 2-0 lead.
Hanrahan and Dotel cruised. The Pirates had their ninth victory in 12 games this season against the Cubs (they are 18-48 against everybody else). And they had their third road series victory in 13 this season.
They slammed the lid on the franchise's worst June since 1891 -- the previous time they won six games in this month against 20 losses.
"Anytime you win a series, it puts confidence in a team," said Lincoln, talking like it was more than his fifth start. "It's not like we've been getting our butts kicked every time. ... We've just been on the other side of things, and, hopefully, this series win will put us on the upside."
For him, the victory "gets that monkey off my back. Now I can just go out there and relax and be who I am and not have to worry about anything that goes on around me. I can be myself and attack hitters.
"For the most part, I've realized that I can still attack the zone at this level and get away with some stuff. That's what I did today. The wind helped me a little bit, but I felt I was my strongest today."
Everyone will learn more in his next start, which comes indoors: Tuesday in his home area, Houston.
Chuck Finder: cfinder@post-gazette.com.
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