Lady luck got the best of Charlie Morton and the Pittsburgh Pirates Monday night as they lost 7-3 to the New York Mets at Citi Field.
Morton struck out four batters and walked none while racking up grounders, and on a different night he might have put the Pirates in very good position to win the game. But he allowed 11 hits, all singles, as the Pirates struggled to record outs against some of the Mets' weakly-struck balls in play. The second inning was especially hard to watch, as the Mets benefited from two infield singles (one of which might have turned into a double play) and a passed ball while scoring two runs while only hitting one ball out of the infield. (There was a second passed ball in the inning that occurred after the two runs scored.)
Chris Snyder (he of the two passed balls) had managed to homer off Dillon Gee in the top of the inning, but the Pirates could do little else with Gee, who racked up eight strikeouts. The Pirates only had five hits in total, an increasingly common result. Still, the Bucs managed to tie the game in the bottom of the seventh inning when Ronny Cedeno brought a run home on a fielder's choice.
After that, though, the weak end of the Bucs bullpen couldn't keep the team in the game, as Daniel McCutchen (who before Monday had benefited greatly from excellent luck as well as his own much-improved pitching) allowed two runs in the seventh and Jose Ascanio allowed two more in the eighth. A couple better bounces for Morton, and Ascanio wouldn't have been in this game in the first place, so the Pirates will have until Tuesday night's contest to think about what might have been.