That is all she wrote, the 2012 season is over in Pittsburgh as the Pirates finished up their 20th consecutive losing season this afternoon with a 4-0 loss to the Atlanta Braves in Chipper Jones’ last regular season game of his career. Game 162 didn’t go the why the Pirates had hoped, but neither did the last 2 months of the season.
AJ was again in search of win number 17 on the year, and again he came up short as he was tagged with the loss in just 5 2/3 innings. When AJ was acquired for almost nothing in the offseason, many people were not exactly sure what the Pirates were getting in the 35-year-old veteran. However, the Pirates really could not have asked for a better season from AJ as he finished 16-10 with 180 K’s in 202 1/3 innings and an ERA of 3.51 in 31 starts. For a guy who broke his face in spring training and missed almost the entire first month of the season, he was outstanding. And his numbers would have been even better if he could have limited the damage on May 2nd and had not given up 12 earned runs to St. Louis in 2 2/3 innings, which was just his 3rd start of the season.
Once again the bats were silent as Bucs’ hitters were shutout and held to just 4 hits on the day. But because I kind of have to talk about both the pitching and hitting, I guess you could say a bright spot was Andrew McCutchen going 1-3. Even that isn’t all that good of news because McCutchen finished the season with an average of .327, 10 points behind the leading Buster Posey.
Just like my last post, I never really envisioned on having to blog about the Pirates finishing their season 79-83, even though I predicted this exact record for the Pirates back in the March issue of my high school newspaper before the season started. Nor did I imagine having to blog about how they can improve on not collapsing next year. But things change, just ask James McDonald. So over the next few weeks and probably months I’ll be looking back on the season that was as well as previewing the 2013 season. But for now a break from “Life after Littlefield” is much needed, as I try to forget about how the Pirates should be playing the Braves on Friday in the playoffs for the first time since 1992.
