Meadows haunts Pirates as Rays beat Virtual Buccos



I will be serving as general manager/manage of the Pirates in a 2020 season simulation along with 29 others using Out Of The Park Baseball. Feel free to check here for daily updates. I realize baseball is a lot less important than what is going on in the world today but perhaps it can provide a diversion for a few moments.

 ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Austin Meadows is haunting the Virtual Pirates.

 Meadows hit a pair of home runs to pace the Tampa Bay Rays to a 7-4 victory over the Pirates on Saturday afternoon at Tropicana Field. He also doubled while going 3 for 4 with four RBIs against his old team.

 Meadows has homered three times off the Pirates in the first two games of the season and driving in five of the Rays’ eight runs.

 Joe Musgrove (0-1) had a rough season debut as the Pirates dropped to 1-1. The big right-hander was tagged for five runs and seven hits in three-plus innings while striking out four and walking one.

 Meadows’ first home run was a solo shot with two outs in the third inning that pushed the Rays’ lead to 2-0. He also hit a two-run blast off Kyle Crick in the seventh that made it 7-0.

 Musgrove was chased in the fourth without retiring a batter. Brandon Lowe’s two-run double keyed the inning.

 Old friend Charlie Morton (1-0) took a shutout into the eighth inning before the Pirates scored all four runs. Gregory Polanco hit a bases-loaded triple for one of the Virtual Buccos’ lone highlights.

 Nick Anderson retired the only batter he faced for his first save, getting JT Riddle to ground out with a runner on second base to end it.

 One other bright spot for the Pirates was Edgar Santana pitching 2 1/3 scoreless innings in relief of Musgrove. The personable right-hander missed last season while recovering from Tommy John reconstructive elbow surgery.

 Bryan Reynolds had two of the Pirates' nine hits.

 Time of game was three hour, 16 minutes and a surprisingly good crowd of 25,031 was on hand at the Virtual Trop. Many of the fans were likely there to see Pirates bench coach Craig Wilson, a legendary slugger in his playing days in Pittsburgh.

 The three-game series concludes Sunday afternoon with a matchup of rookies as Mitch Keller starts for the Pirates against left-hander Brendan McKay.

This presents a bit of a quandary for GM/manager John Perrotto, who lives in the Blackhawk School District. McKay is a Blackhawk graduate and his education, at least in small part, was financed by Perrotto.

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