(Photo Credit: Keith Srakocic \/ AP)<\/p>\n
The Pirates (71 – 49) look to\u00a0straight the ship after a 1 – 5 road trip that\u00a0has dropped their NL Central lead to two games. Another team chasing them for a playoff spot, The Arizona Diamondbacks (62 – 57) invade PNC Park for a 3-game set starting tonight. Gerrit Cole (5 – 5, 3.95 ERA) will face Brandon McCarthy (2 – 6, 4.73 ERA).<\/p>\n
Leading Off<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The Diamondbacks trail the Pirates\u00a0 by 8 1\/2 games going in to tonight’s contest.\u00a0A series victory by the Bucs could go a long way to locking up their first playoff spot since 1992.<\/p>\n Hurdle’s Quotes<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n On Wandy Rodriguez’s BP session today and rehab <\/strong>— “He threw 35 pitches —\u00a0fastball, changeup, repeated his delivery, threw some two-seamers and some four-seamers as well, so it went well. If he feels good tomorrow, we will have him throw a bullpen session in San Diego on Monday. The next step after that, if we progress in a positive manner, would be to throw another sim game against some hitters on Friday in San Francisco.”<\/p>\n On giving Gerrit Cole a couple extra days off between starts <\/strong>— “Were monitoring innings. Were finding a way to be smart with how many available innings he can pitch this year to maximize that opportunity, also to help him probably re-calibrate a number of things but we are keeping an eye on the innings and were keeping an eye on the pitches. We’ve tried to devise a plan we’re going to follow to keep him in play through the end of the season and possibly an opportunity to pitch in October as well.”<\/p>\n Other Notes<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n — Pedro Alvarez <\/strong>has homered twice in his last four games after going 11 straight without a bomb. He enters tonight’s contest tied for the league lead in homers with Arizona’s Paul Goldschmidt<\/strong>. Alvarez is also a homer away from becoming the only third baseman in team history to hit 30 homers in two different seasons.<\/p>\n — Starling Marte <\/strong>collected his 10th triple of the season yesterday in St. Louis to become the first Pirates player since Jack Wilson <\/strong>in 2004 to have at least 10 doubles, triples and home runs in a season and the first outfielder to do so since Andy Van Slyke<\/strong>.<\/p>\n First pitch is set for 7:05<\/p>\n Follow Travis for Pirates news and in-game updates on twitter @TBerardi_OVA or @OVAthletics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Photo Credit: Keith Srakocic \/ AP) The Pirates (71 – 49) look to\u00a0straight the ship after a 1 – 5 road trip that\u00a0has dropped their NL Central lead to two games. Another team chasing them for a playoff spot, The Arizona Diamondbacks (62 – 57) invade PNC Park for a 3-game set starting tonight. Gerrit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15999,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[616,610,377,1225,2058],"class_list":["post-15995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-professional","tag-clint-hurdle","tag-pedro-alvarez","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-starling-marte","tag-wandy-rodriguez"],"yoast_head":"\n