Pirates Lose Second Straight and Correia Scheduled To Spot Start

Tonight the Pirates lost a very important game to the Cincinnati Reds, their second straight loss and some very exciting/interesting stuff went down. I will start off with some of the fireworks that went on in the second inning and then get on to what actually happened in the game.

 After last night there were already tensions high and when Mike Leake hit Josh Harrison in the second inning of tonight's game things just escalated from there. It seemed as if after Harrison got hit Leake said something to him as he was getting ready to walk to first base and Harrison then barked something back and gave Leake a long stare. It continued as Harrison started walking towards first this time doing nothing but walking to the base as Leake starting walking to the baseline instead of just receiving a new ball from his catcher. The home-plate umpire Brian Gorman proceed to try to put an end to the unnecessary actions by issuing warnings both bench's, much to the dislike of Pirates manager Clint Hurdle. Hurdle was more then just a little upset, he was steamed and he showed it by proceeding to get ejected from the game. I think Hurdle had a legit beef in this situation, because his bench really did nothing wrong to earn a warning it was the Reds hitting all of our batters, the Pirates had the right to retaliate if they wanted.

But the real disappointment came on the scorecard as the Pirates lost this one 5-4 in the eighth inning. James McDonald didn't have his best stuff tonight but he managed as he got through six innings on four runs just three of them earned. Jared Hughes pitched a scoreless seventh but allowed a lead-off triple to start the eighth to Scott Rolen who ended up scoring the following batter. The next batter Navarro for the Reds hit a dribbler back to Hughes who then went to tag Navarro on the baseline and gave him what seemed to be an obvious push along with the tag, Navarro then walked away and soon turned around giving Hughes a long stare. Chapman came in for the Reds in the ninth to close the game out and give the Reds their fifth straight victory advancing their lead to 5.5 games in the division.

In other news the Pirates announced today that they will give Kevin Correia a spot start on Wednesday against the Diamondbacks. The Pirates are most likely doing this because they are now in the midst of their twenty game in twenty days stretch so starting Correia here will basically serve as an off day for the rest of the staff, pushing their starts back a day. This is one of the nice things they can do with Correia in the pen because it is going to be very important to have all five of your pitchers healthy and rested down the stretch for a playoff run. This will also keep Correia happy which isn't what you necessarily are trying to do but it is a nice bonus to to the fact that it will also keep the rest of the pitchers happy.

A.J. Burnett vs. Homer Bailey tomorrow 1:10 start time, its very important for the Pirates to avoid the sweep tomorrow as their is a big difference between a 4.5 game lead and a 6.5 game lead. Get it done.

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