Yankees: 6 - Pirates: 3

The Pirates and Yankees knocked heads today in the Grapefruit League opener. The Pirates starters kept even with the Yankees until the high number players made their entrance into the game. Yankees hit a walk-off 3-run HR in the 9th inning to win the game 6-3.

The Pirates two top starters, Paul Maholm and Ross Ohlendorf looked outstanding in their 1 innings of work. Giving up no runs and no hits. The young Bucs kept pase with the defending World Champions and for the most part, out pitched them. You can’t worry about wins and losses in Spring Training, you just want the starters to look good and not get injured.

The offense wasn’t fantastic today, but early in Spring Training, the pitching always has the advantage as the batters are still adjusting to seeing pitching again. I really liked how Andrew McCutchen looked. He got a solid in field single and took second on a bad pick-off attempt. He didn’t score as a result, but it was still encouraging to see him playing well in the opening game.

I look forward to seeing how the Pirates do the rest of Spring Training, because it is indeed a very exciting time to be a Pirates fan. Optimism among the fan base seems higher than years past, and because the first Spring Training game has been played, that means one thing: it’s baseball season! No more suffering through the long offseason, you can now rest easy, knowing that in about one months, the Pirates will be opening the 2010 regular season. I know, I am thrilled, and I am sure many other fans are as well. I look forward to live-tweeting the games I attend and hopefully live-blogging. It should be an exciting time for this blog. There are plenty more Spring Training games left, and I will do a more comprehensive analysis of the players when there is a larger sample size. For now, though, let’s just focus on the awesome fact that baseball season is back, and soon, the warm weather will return!