Historically, interleague play is when the Pirates fall off the face of the earth into an abyss that they never recover from for the rest of the season.
While most of that has to do with the fact that they’re not a very good team, I can’t help but thinking that some of it has to do with things like leaving Ryan Doumit – who is bad at everything except hitting – to play first base and using Ryan Church, owner of a .198/.243/.337 line as the designated hitter.
There were some other questionable moves in today’s lineup as well, such as benching Jose Tabata for just his third game in the Majors despite him having hit the ground running.
However, on the most fundamental level, I feel like you should definitely take a guy who can hit well and who is a liability everywhere he plays on the diamond and make sure that for the few games a year that this is a possibility for a National League club that the only thing he does is hit.
Just saying.
