Good evening,
Today I attended the Altoona Curve game and as I was preparing to leave for the game, I found out that James McDonald was the starting pitcher for today for the Curve against the Richmond Flying Squirrels. McDonald was pitching for the Curve on a rehab start and has been on the DL since May 1st with shoulder stiffness. Here is the story on the injury from ESPN.
McDonald started the noon game in front of a crowd of 3,114 at Peoples Natural Gas Field and quickly got off on a rough start walking the leadoff hitter Jarrett Parker on four pitches. This might have been a good thing, since Parker has been on fire in the past five games hitting 5 home runs and driving in 11 runs. He then got behind 2-0 to the #2 hitter Joe Panik before throwing his first strike of the game. He walked Panik, before Adam Duvall drove a pitch into the front row of seats in left field to give Richmond an early 3-0 lead. After getting two outs in the inning, McDonald walked Javier Herrera and Andrew Susac before being pulled in the first inning.McDonald threw 33 pitches before being pulled for Nate Baker, with 14 of those pitches being strikes.
The early exit was just a beginning for the Curve who fell to the Flying Squirrels 13-2. In the four game series against Richmond, Altoona went 1-3 and losing the last three games of the series. They were outscored in the series 49-30. With the loss the Curve drop to 20-23 while Richmond improved to 26-23.
The outing raises some questions about McDonald. There was no reference to what the pitch count was in this start, so he might have simply met it and the team and Pirates officials did not want to push the envelope. Hopefully the injury was not acting up and McDonald just had a rough outing. It will be interesting to see if McDonald stays in Altoona for another start which would be scheduled for Saturday night in Portland, ME as the Curve take on the Sea Dogs.
Click Here to see the box score from today's game.
- The Flood City Sports Fan
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