As manager Jim Tracy mulled over his bullpen options, sans closer Matt Capps, before Tuesday's game, he tossed out a variety of names, insisting that the situation would dictate who would come racing out of the left-field bullpen. Tracy said the important thing wasn't who saved the game, but simply that someone saved it.
It did indeed take a collective effort, and it wasn't pretty, but the end result had Tracy still praising his bullpen's effort in closing out a 5-3 win over the Mariners in front of 24,520 at Safeco Field.
"We had to piece it together with the bullpen," Tracy said. "It worked for us."
Little did Tracy know it would take five different pieces to record the final six outs and preserve a seventh win for Pirates starter Tom Gorzelanny. And if Tuesday's bullpen situation was a puzzle, there was much strategy that went into putting it together.
Gorzelanny exited with a comfortable three-run cushion after the seventh that was quickly narrowed to two after a Richie Sexson home run off Jonah Bayliss. Four batters later, the Mariners threatened to take the lead when they put two on. Out came Bayliss. In ran Masumi Kuwata, piece No. 3 from the bullpen on the night.
"It is natural to be nervous in that kind of situation, so I tried to say to myself just all I can do is give it my best," Kuwata said.
His best was good enough. The right-hander needed only four pitches to induce a ground ball off the bat of Ben Broussard, which earned Kuwata his first Major League hold and pushed the Pirates closer to finishing this win off.
"[One of] the key points in the game is what Kuwata did to Broussard," Tracy said. "He has tremendous know-how and obviously great confidence knowing he could locate."
The puzzle wasn't completed yet, however, and it got even more complicated after Damaso Marte, the fourth bullpen pitcher, walked Ichiro Suzuki to lead off the ninth.
With one out, Tracy called Shawn Chacon to connect the last dots and save his first game since Sept. 22, 2004, when the right-hander was with the Rockies.
Two hitters, two strikeouts and Pittsburgh had itself a series-opening win.
"You really get a chance to have the finishing point on the game, and it's one of the greatest feelings," said Chacon, who made the starter-to-bullpen move only a week ago. "It's nice getting out there and getting it done. For us, the bigger picture is winning the first game of the series and now we need to win the series."
And for the first time since May 2006, the Pirates walked into an American League ballpark and walked out with a win. It also gave Pittsburgh its fifth win in its last seven games, evening its Interleague record at 5-5.
"They're all huge, especially given our Interleague struggles," said Jason Bay, who finished the game with two hits. "With a win tonight, we have a chance to win the series the next two nights, and that's all we're trying to do is. It's not a must-win series, but with the position we put ourselves in, it's pretty close."



For Gorzelanny, the win snapped a winless June that has seen its shares of ups and downs. After coming into June with a 2.39 ERA, Gorzelanny saw it shoot up to 3.04 after his first three starts of the month. Though none of them terribly bad, they were deemed unacceptable by the Pittsburgh left-hander's standards.
And while he's not a man of many words, on Tuesday, the words did flow a little more freely after an encouraging performance.
"[It was] better, obviously," Gorzelanny said, comparing Tuesday's outing with his last appearance, in which he allowed three home runs. "I continued to battle and get outs and did whatever I could to stay in the game. I wanted to do my part and go as hard as I could."
With a Capps-depleted bullpen, Gorzelanny understood the importance of going deep into the game. However, he labored early, needing 43 pitches to make it through the first two innings and falling behind seven of the 11 hitters he faced during those frames.
But he minimized the damage to only one run, which would be one of only two runs the left-hander surrendered in his seven innings. He capped off a 123-pitch night with a strikeout of Jose Guillen, giving the Pirates every last ounce of energy he had.
"I had absolutely zero left," said Gorzelanny, who picked up his first Interleague win. "There was none left in the tank. It was on empty."
It marked the fifth time in his last seven starts that Gorzelanny has thrown at least 110 pitches, a pattern the left-hander admitted he needs to change. But he successfully kept a strong Seattle offense guessing all night.
"[Gorzelanny] seemed to kind of pitch backwards, and throw strikes with his offspeed pitches, and he kind of kept everybody off balance," said Broussard. "He won the battle tonight."
As for the Pittsburgh offense, it took advantage of a shaky first inning from Seattle starter Miguel Batista to give Gorzelanny an early two-run lead. And by the end of the night, every hitter in the lineup had reached base at least once.
Ryan Doumit, the Moses Lake, Wash., native who had about 70 friends and family members in the stands on Tuesday, reached base three times, including on a bases-loaded walk that gave the Pirates their second run of the game.
In his first game back since being out with the flu, second baseman Freddy Sanchez put together a two-hit night that included a fifth-inning double that drove in the Pirates' third run.
Though they squandered opportunities to add to that lead throughout the night -- by the end of the game, the Pirates had left 10 men on base - the Bucs managed to put across just enough.
But credit this one to the bullpen. They may not be the most dominant relieving corps in the league, but they proved to be quite gutsy when it came crunch time on Tuesday.
"We bent a little bit, but we held on," Tracy said.
One night with an unavailable Matt Capps completed. Now, only two more left to go.



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